Warner Bros. had one of its greatest successes ever with the release of Todd Phillips’ Joker in 2019. The numbers speak for themselves: Over $335 million domestic, making it one of the highest-grossing R-rated films ever, and make that over a billion dollars globally, all on a budget in the $55-70 million range, depending on which report you believe. That is peanuts for a film in the comic book universe. So why not let Phillips have carte blanche to turn the sequel into a quasi-musical and triple the budget? The fans are locked in, right? Right? What could go wrong?
King of the Crop: Joker: Folie à Deux Scrapes Together a Disappointing Debut
The numbers for Joker: Folie à Deux could be justifiably placed in our Rotten Returns section this week. But something has to be placed here, and it may as well be the film that was No. 1 in the country with an estimated $37.8 million, according to Warner Bros. That is a remarkable drop for a sequel to a film that started with $96.2 million — the highest October opening ever — and had a solid follow-through with a 3.48 multiple to its final gross. Folie a Deux’s numbers are going the other direction. Todd Phillips followed up his massive success of The Hangover, a film with $35 million budget, with sequels that collectively totaled roughly $183 million. Both were still big successes. Looking at films that were direct sequels to “originals” that initially opened in the $50+ million range, Joker: FaD now joins this list of those whose opening weekends fell off the most:
Wonder Woman 1984* (-88.36%)
Alice Through the Looking Glass (-76.87%)
The Marvels (-69.95%)
The Boss Baby: Family Business* (-68.13%)
Joker: Folie à Deux (-60.80%)
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (-59.21%)
The Secret Life of Pets 2 (-55.29%)
Evan Almighty (-54.10%)
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (-50.59%)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (-48.73%)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (-46.78%)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (-46.14%)
Sex and the City 2 (-45.65%)
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (-45.64%)
Wrath of the Titans (-45.36%)
Fifty Shades Darker (-45.28%)
Shazam! Fury of the Gods (-43.72%)
Angels & Demons (-40.05%)
The sequels to Wonder Woman and The Boss Baby get a pass for their pandemic era releases, but if you’re keeping score, Warner Bros. owns nine of the 18 films on that list. FaD’s $37.8 million is not among the very worst openings for a film in the history of $200 million budgets — at least 17 films have opened worse — and Warner Bros. itself has a few others worse than that, like Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation, and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Their disaster from last year, The Flash, even opened to $55 million. But looking at films of that budget with a domestic opening of less than $60 million, only a handful of them (Peter Jackson’s King Kong and final Hobbit film, No Time To Die, Men In Black 3, Transformers: The Last Knight) had enough international support to get them out of the red during their theatrical runs. Titanic is kind of in a league of its own on these lists. The Joker sequel, meanwhile, added $81.1 million to its total this weekend on the international side. It won’t be enough.
The next question will be is how brutal the drop will be next week. Will it be of the historic variety or just bad enough to completely sink its prospects altogether? Just a few years ago, David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills opened to $49.4 million, fell off -70.8%, and finished with just $92 million. Granted it was also available for home streaming, and we weren’t even a full year into the vaccine portion of the pandemic. Last year’s The Marvels then opened to $46.1 million, fell off 78.1% with no home streaming, and finished with just $84.4 million.
Joker: Folie à Deux’s Tomatometer dropped drastically after its debut at the Venice International Film Festival. Its Popcornmeter is also the single worst audience score for a major wide release this year, and those surveyed also stamped a D Cinemascore on it, tying for the worst grade of 2024 with The Exorcism. This is not going to end well for Joker: Folie A Deux, the rare financial blemish on Phillips’ resume.
The Top 10 and Beyond: The Wild Robot Holds in Second, White Bird Debuts in Seventh
Last week’s leader, The Wild Robot, fell 47.8% this week to $18.7 million. That brings its 10-day total to $63.9 million. How does that jive with last week’s suggestion that it could be headed for around $120-125 million? Right now it maintains its 10th place total among September releases through their second weekend. It is nearly $4 million ahead of the pace of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, though that film had a $20.9 second weekend and finished with $119.7 million. The Wild Robot will need to regroup a bit to stay along that path, but the estimate still isn’t far off, even if we drop it to $110-120 million. Worldwide the film is only at $100.4 million and is going to need a little more overseas oomph to get into profit.
Warner Bros. is sitting much prettier with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which this weekend crossed $400 million worldwide, the eighth film this year to achieve that (and the third from WB). Another $10.3 million brings its domestic total to $265.5 million. That is still less than $2 million behind Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, though that film’s fifth weekend was just $9.4 million, so Burton’s sequel remains on track to crack $300 million domestic.
Doing much worse on the animated front is Paramount’s Transformers One, down to just $5.3 million in its third weekend. At this point, the film is not going to reach $60 million domestic and may just barely get itself over $100 million worldwide. It could end up being the studio’s biggest loser of the year, replacing John Krasinski’s If. Universal and Blumhouse, on the other hand, have a pretty solid hit with the remake of Speak No Evil, which, after $2.8 million this weekend, is at $32.5 million domestic and $67.4 million worldwide.
In the back half of the top 10 we still have Deadpool & Wolverine adding to its historic total with $1.58 million. Coralie Faraget’s The Substance appeared to be on its way off the list, but a 34% drop moved it up to seventh place with $1.36 million. The body horror release by Mubi has now grossed $9.7 million in wide release. Amazon/MGM’s initial platform release of My Old Ass is now in its second week of wide release, and it grossed $908,000, bringing its total to just $4.5 million. A24 expanded A Different Man into 265 theaters this weekend, and it made just $186,000 for a total of $373,000.
After two years on the shelf, Lionsgate finally released Marc Forster’s White Bird (“A Wonder Story”) and it continued a string of subpar openings for the studio. Six in a row now have opened to less than $5 million, and this was the weakest of the bunch with $1.56 million, barely more than 1992, which opened to $1.41 million in just 875 theaters. One of those six films was Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis; its 46% Tomatometer score and D+ Cinemascore fell 73.9% down to $1.07 million. It has made $6.4 million to date. Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go with Halle Berry fell out of the top 10 but is the only film during this stretch from Lionsgate to gross over $10 million.
Wrapping up the limited releases this week, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night made $280,000 in 21 theaters. It has made $638,000 as it prepares for its wide launch next weekend. Meanwhile, GKids released Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s Look Back in a couple theaters, which, together with Sunday screenings in 535 locations, made $688,000.
On the Vine: Terrifier 3 Prepares for Clown Face-Off
Wouldn’t it be something next week if Terrifier 3 actually beat Joker? An indie film can dream, can’t it? Given how well the second film expanded its audience and created awareness of Art the Clown, it isn’t unreasonable to expect a big surprise next week at the box office. Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is opening wide, as mentioned above, and should be better than the Pharrell Williams Lego documentary Piece by Piece and the latest My Hero Academia film, You’re Next. A big Joker drop and a big wide release for Terrifier 3 could produce some interesting headlines next week.
Full List of Box Office Results: October 4-6, 2024
-
33%
31%
Joker: Folie à Deux
(2024)
– $37.5 million ($37.5 million total)
-
98%
98%
The Wild Robot
(2024)
– $18.7 million ($63.9 million total)
-
77%
80%
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
(2024)
– $10.3 million ($265.5 million total)
-
89%
98%
Transformers One
(2024)
– $5.3 million ($47.2 million total)
-
83%
85%
Speak No Evil
(2024)
– $2.8 million ($32.5 million total)
-
78%
94%
Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
– $1.58 million ($633.8 million total)
-
71%
98%
White Bird
(2023)
– $1.56 million ($1.56 million total)
-
91%
73%
The Substance
(2024)
– $1.36 million ($9.7 million total)
-
47%
35%
Megalopolis
(2024)
– $1.07 million ($6.6 million total)
-
92%
90%
My Old Ass
(2024)
– $908,000 ($4.5 million total)
Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast.
[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]
Thumbnail image by Parisa Taghizadeh/©Warner Bros.
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