Nobody at Warner Bros. is going to be laughing about this weekend’s box-office totals.
There are two two more days, including one big night, left to go, but so far Joker: Folie à Deux is showing every sign of suffering a historic collapse at the box office. According to Deadline, in its second weekend of release, the Joker sequel “is posting a -82 percent freefall of with around $6.7-$7M per industry estimates.”
Those numbers would make Folie à Deux “the absolute worst hold for a DC character movie in the history of the brand on the big screen.” Generally, hits decline less than 60 percent from weekend to weekend, and anything over that percentage of decline is bad. So an 82 percent drop would be very disappointing.
In its opening weekend, Joker: Folie à Deux grossed $37.6 million in the U.S., down sharply from the first film, which had a $96.2 million opening weekend back in 2019. Combine an underwhelming debut with a massive drop, and you have the makings of one of the costliest flops in recent memory.
Industry reports claim that Warner Bros. supposedly spent in the neighborhood of $200 million on the DC sequel, which stars Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck and Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn.
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Per Deadline, the previous worst drop from first to second week for a DC Comics movie was The Flash from 2023, which dropped 73 percent from its opening weekend. (That opening weekend was still far better than Joker 2, at $55.0 million.) They also cite The Suicide Squad’s 72 percent — but that had the added issue of being released simultaneously to theaters and to HBO Max, limiting its potential audience.
A huge drop is not entirely unexpected, given Joker 2’s poor reviews from critics and audiences — who rated the movie a “D,” the worst rating ever given to a comic-book movie. (Joker got a B+ — even The Flash got a B.
Instead of Joker, it looks like a totally different clown is in line to rule the weekend box office: The indie gorefest Terrifier 3 appears on track to gross roughly $18 million in theaters.
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