Things have just gone from bad to worse for Joker: Folie a Deux, as Warner Bros. has apparently already lined up its digital release.
When the first Joker came out way back in 2019, it surprised pretty much everyone by making a whole billion dollars and change at the box office. What was not a surprise was Warner Bros. deciding to greenlight a sequel, a sequel, I might add, that had a budget of $200 million to produce and $100 million to market and distribute. And how did it do in its opening weekend? So badly it made even less than Morbius, of all films.
The film just had its second weekend, which saw it take home $7 million domestically, a massive 81% drop from its first weekend, the worst second-weekend decline for any comic-book movie ever. It’s incredibly rough, and means Warner Bros. will end making a loss of somewhere between $100-200 million. Can’t tax write this one off though, can ya?
What Warner Bros. can do, though, is release it digitally, which according to Variety is exactly what it’s going to do. The outlet says that Joker: Folie a Deux is now due for a digital home entertainment release on October 29, two weeks away at the time of writing, and less than a month after it arrived in cinemas.
According to box office analysts via Variety, it’s believed that director Todd Phillips choice to include song and dance numbers into the sequel might have alienated the DC fan base, especially in contrast to the darker first entry. “The first Joker was a timely, fresh counterpoint to the dominant superhero narrative and tone, and it worked,” said analyst David A. Gross of movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “The filmmakers deserve credit for making more unconventional creative choices in Folie, adding the romantic angle with Lady Gaga. But this time nothing worked.”
I guess now we just have to wait and see if Matt Reeves does anything with his take on the Joker, or if James Gunn is planning anything with the DCU’s new take on Batman.