The movie Joker: Folie à Deux, which is only showing in cinemas for the second weekend, fell to the third place in the table of attendance of American cinemas. In a week-over-week comparison, 81 percent fewer people came to see it, sales fell from an already weak $37.6 million to just $7.1 million.
From Todd Phillips‘ star-studded tale of the DC superhero universe, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga and includes musical numbers, Warner Bros. promised a similar success to the first installment. It cost $60 million in 2019, but grossed $1.1 billion worldwide and won two Oscars.
But the sequel has increased several times over, and according to Variety.com, Joker: Folie à Deux, including marketing costs, needs to take in $450 million to break even. According to the website, which describes its performance so far as completely tragic and disastrous, this will no longer happen.
Taking into account sales from foreign markets, including the Czech Republic, Joker: Folie à Deux now has $165.3 million on its account, the most optimistic estimates suggest that it could end up with around $250 million.
It is the drop in attendance between the first and second week in theaters that is often an important indicator for the film’s viability. In Joker’s case, the 81 percent drop is unprecedented. Not even last year’s unsuccessful Marvels titles experienced such a steep fall in the superhero genre, for which attendance decreased by 78.1 percent after the second weekend, Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania with 69.9 percent, or Shazam! Wrath of the Gods with 69 percent.
“In the history of the DC comics world, no picture has fallen so steeply,” emphasizes the magazine Deadline.com. According to him, the decline in interest in Joker is even steeper than in the case of the film Suicide Squad from the summer of 2021, which the HBO video library made available in video libraries in parallel due to the then-coronavirus pandemic and the closing of movie theaters in most countries of the world, so people preferred to watch it at home rather than they spent money on him at the cinemas. On Rottentomatoes.com, Joker: Folie à Deux has an average rating of 33 percent from critics and 32 percent from audiences.
A low-budget horror film about another murderous clown, called Terrifier 3, has now taken the top spot in the US cinema attendance table, instead of the expensive Joker. It grossed $18.3 million in the first weekend, which is admirable, among other things, considering only minimal promotion, according to Deadline.com. Second place was taken by the animated Rozzum in the wild.
Video: Joker sequel trailer
The film Joker: Folie à Deux is now also showing in Czech cinemas. | Video: Vertical Entertainment