The total budget of Joker 2 alias Folie à Deux has been revealed, and it is indeed a big crack compared to Todd Phillips’ first DC film.
In 2019, Joker won everything: a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, two Oscars (one for Joaquin Phoenix, the other for the music of Hildur Guðnadóttir) and above all more than a billion dollars in revenue worldwide. This tidy sum allowed it to become the best-performing R-rated film (forbidden to minors unaccompanied by an adult) of all time at the box office, before being dethroned by Marvel with the bulldozer Deadpool & Wolverine.
The two franchises, beyond being drawn from comics, have a fairly similar trajectory: a first film with a budget of less than 60 millionunexpected recipes and inevitably eyes bigger than their stomachs for the future, which after the small miracle of production wanted to join the big leagues. Or rather blockbusters, with much higher budgets and expectations. Except that in the case of Deadpoolthe sequels continued to bring audiences back to theaters, unlike Joker 2 who might have difficulty covering their costs, especially given the costs in question.
Joker: $200 Million Madness
According to a recent article by Variety, Joker: Folie à Deux would have cost a total of nearly $300 millionmarketing included. The production bill amounts to 200 million (information relayed by Variety since last February and subsequently denied by Todd Phillips). We must add to that the 100 million dollars allocated to the promotion of the film, again according to the American media.
If it represents three times (!) the budget of the first film, this envelope nevertheless remains within the average of blockbusters: Star Wars 8, Wonder Woman 2, Fast & Furious 9, Dune 2, Black Panther 2…
The marketing budget represents on average half of the production budget, the 100 million reserved for the promotion of the film also remains within industry standards. On the salary side, no new information has been relayed. As we also learned last February, 20 million would have fallen into the pockets of Joaquin Phoenixotherwise Arthur Fleck, and 12 million in those of Lady Gaga who plays a new Harley Quinn.
Given its disappointing, if not catastrophic, first weekend of operation (only 37 million collected), Joker 2 might have difficulty filling the cash drawer and would thus have to join the previous failures or glasses of lukewarm water stamped DC after Aquaman 2, Blue Beetle, The Flash, Black Adam, The Suicide Squad….
