Lacklustre $40M box office debut for 'Folie à Deux'

According to Variety, Joker: Folie à Deux, the highly anticipated sequel to 2019's billion-dollar comic book smash Joker, hit North American theatres with a No 1 debut this weekend. However, the film's $40 million domestic opening fell significantly below industry expectations, leaving Warner Bros with serious concerns about its financial outlook.

Early projections had placed Folie à Deux in the $50 to $65 million range for its opening weekend, already a downgrade from its initial $70 million estimate. This underperformance marks a stark contrast to the original Joker, which debuted with a stellar $96.2 million in 2019 and set a new October box office record at the time.

The tepid start is especially troubling considering the $200 million production budget attached to Folie à Deux - more than triple the cost of the first film's modest $65 million price tag. To break even, the film would need to gross at least $450 million globally, according to industry insiders familiar with the film's financials. With the current pace and negative early reactions from both critics and audiences, achieving that goal may prove difficult.

"When you greenlight a sequel, you hope it does the business that the previous one did," says Jeff Bock, an analyst at Exhibitor Relations. "This is definitely a concern. Warners wanted the sequel and probably overspent to get it to happen."

The sequel reunites director Todd Phillips with Joaquin Phoenix, who reprises his Oscar-winning role as Arthur Fleck, the man behind the Joker persona. Joining Phoenix in the film is pop icon Lady Gaga, who plays Harleen "Lee" Quinzel, a fellow inmate and co-conspirator at Arkham Asylum. But while the original Joker captivated audiences with its gritty, psychological take on Fleck's descent into madness, Folie à Deux pivots toward a genre-bending musical, featuring fantasy sequences and reimagined covers of songs like Get Happy and For Once in My Life.

"Todd Phillips wanted to do something completely different, but musical numbers in a superhero film were always going to be a tough sell to mainstream audiences," Bock adds.

Folie à Deux's genre shift has seemingly played a role in its mixed reception. The film has received a lukewarm 33% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating that critics and audiences alike were not sold on Phillips' bold artistic choices. This stands in stark contrast to Joker, which earned widespread acclaim and walked away with the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2019.