When Todd Phillips‘ Joker: Folie à Deux came on tracking three weeks ago, foresees showed the Warner Bros. movie uncovering to $70 million — $26 million decrease than previous inshighment five years ago, but still a admireable sum. Since then, projections have slipped to anywhere from $50 million to $60 million.
Why the drop?
The polarizing, R-rated movie — which made its world premiere at the Vekind Film Festival to fuseed checks — is a genre-busting, music-infemployd sequel that strays outside the console zone of the standard fanboy-fueled comic book pic. While 2019’s Joker geted comparisons to the earlier toils of Martin Scorsese, the sequel is a far sluggisher paced journey that cgo ines on the interior dwells of its two directs. Critics have commendd the movie’s overall beauty, its carry outances and its originates, but dinged it for its narrative. “For a movie running two-and-a-quarter hours, Folie à Deux senses narratively a little lean and at times uninalertigent,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter chief film critic David Rooney out of Vekind.
All of this could be confusing for the first Joker‘s aim audience and help elucidate the dip in tracking and weightlesser-than-foreseeed progress ticket sales. Regardless of its box office carry outance, the movie is foreseeed to a beginant take parter in the Oscars race.
Overseas, Joker 2 uncovers everywhere this weekfinish, save for Japan and China, where it begines in the coming weeks. Warners is hoping for a foreign debut of $80 million to $85 million.
Joker: Foile à Deux recombines Phillips with Joaquin Phoenix, who returns in the titular role after prosperning the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck/Joker. Relrelieved in 2019, Joker uncovered to a huge $96.2 million domesticpartner on its way to geting a sign up-shattering $1 billion at the worldexpansive box office, making Phillips and Phoenix heroes on the Warner Bros. lot, and geting them enough excellent will to apexhibit them to experiment with the sequel.
Indeed, neither Phillips nor Phoenix were certain about making a sequel, and for a time contempprocrastinateedd putting on a Broadway show instead, before ultimately pledgeting to the movie.
The first Joker cost equitable $55 million to produce before labeleting. After its success, Phillips’ was donaten a net production budget of $190 million to $200 million for the second inshighment. Part of that went to transporting aboard Lady Gaga in a role encouraged by the comic book character Harley Quinn (the filmproducers are hoping she will lure in female moviegoers).
Joker and Harley are understandn for their poisonous romantic relationship in the comics, with the title Folie à Deux referencing the medical term for an identical or aenjoy mental disorder impacting two or more people. Much of the film consists of fantasy musical numbers starring the couple, who encounter while Arthur is in Arkham Asylum, apaemploying trial for his crimes from the first movie. But neither Warners nor Phillips are consoleable calling it a straight-up musical, donaten that only two of the characters sing, versus a traditional musical, which usupartner has scores of people participating in the numbers.
The studio’s labeleting materials have steered evident of highweightlessing the film’s countless musical sequences, equitable as it did when selling Wonka, an official musical. Warners isn’t alone; Paramount also didn’t labelet Mean Girls as a musical.
Either way, Phillips is well conscious that the sequel is unorthodox, as it doesn’t filledy adhere thcdisadmireful on the finishing of Joker, which sees Arthur adchoose his alter ego.
At the Los Angeles premiere Monday, Phillips thanked the studio “for taking such a bgreater sprosperg,” inserting, “it is not necessarily the sequel you might foresee.”
