Folie à Deux is significantly less successful than the first opus, in 2019.
It was in the running to be the biggest hit of the year. In fact, it risks being one of the most spectacular flops of 2024. Joker: Folie à Deux completely missed its debut at the US box office: 40 million dollars since its release on Friday across the Atlantic! A score which certainly allows the DC blockbuster to take control of the ranking. But a score very clearly below initial projections (the 70 million mark was once considered).
Weighed down by very disappointing reviews and the recent bad buzz around its star, Joker 2 thus two and a half times worse than Joker 1. In 2019, the surprise Joaquin Phoenix had totaled 96 million dollars during its first American weekend, becoming the biggest launch in the history of the US box office for a month of October. A memorable record. This second opus is more at the level of a Morbiusthe Sony blockbuster with Jared Leto that went unnoticed last year. It is above all at the same level as The Marvelswhich opened to 46 million last year, notoriously becoming the MCU’s biggest failure at the box office (206 million at the end of the year).
Internationally, the Folie à Deux by Phoenix and Gaga hardly made any more revenue: $80 million for a total total of $120 million worldwide, knowing that the film cost around $200 million in production budget. For the record, Arthur Fleck alone accumulated 250 million globally after its first weekend in 2019 (for a budget of 65 million at the time).
Specialists believe that it would be necessary Joker 2 earns more than 450 million to allow Warner Bros. to cover its costs. A threshold which already seems very compromised after this catastrophic launch. In any case, it is already established that the Folie à Deux will be very far from the billion dollars gleaned by the original film.
In the rest of the ranking, DreamWorks Animation continues to perform well with its Robot Sauvagewhich this Sunday earned $65 million at the US box office and $100 million worldwide (the film was released on Wednesday in France).
And Joker 2 misses, Warner Bros. can console himself with Beetlejuice 2. After a month in theaters, this sequel is still delighting the public and remains in third place at the US box office, with an additional 11 million this weekend (265 million in total in North America) and almost 400 million in dollars in revenue worldwide.
