The killing nope: ‘Joker’ sequel bombs at the box office
Moviegoers say adieu to ‘Folie à Deux,’ causing the sequel to lag behind predecessor’s $96.2M debut.
Hello! Welcome to The Box Office Report for the weekend of Oct. 4-6, 2024.
1. Joker: Folie à Deux
Weekend gross: $40M
Total domestic gross: $40M
Last weekend: New release
Percent drop: NA
It’s not often a movie unites the world like Joker: Folie à Deux. Critics hate it. Moviegoers hate it. And it flopped at the box office.
The sequel’s $40 million opening weekend is quite the fall from the first Joker movie. That one opened with $96.2 million in 2019 and went on to gross $335.5 million in North America and $1.063 billion worldwide.
The original Joker was nominated for 11 Oscars including Best Picture. Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor and Todd Phillips was nominated for Best Director. I’m pretty sure the only prize that Folie à Deux will win is a historic D rating from CinemaScore — the lowest ever for a comic book movie.
Phillips has said he’s done with this franchise, and even if he wasn’t, I can’t imagine Warner Bros. dropping another $200 million to make a third one after Folie à Deux flopped this hard.
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2. The Wild Robot
Weekend gross: $18.7M
Total domestic gross: $64M
Last weekend: 1st
Percent drop: 48
While the Joker sequel bombed, the four returning movies that made up the rest of the weekend’s top five managed to keep their drops from last weekend pretty respectable.
The Wild Robot came down 48 percent from its debut, adding $18.7 million to its domestic total. The stunning animated film now sits at just under $64 million in North America, enough to move it past The Call of the Wild ($62.3 million) on director Chris Sanders’ domestic rankings. The Wild Robot also crossed the $100 million worldwide mark.
