A tale of Two Jokers
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​  David Vance SubstackRead More
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I remember it well as it turned out to be the last time that I ever went out to the Movies! I am talking about Joker movie and I saw it late 2019. I thought it was truly fantastic. Taking Batman’s arch nemesis and exploring his deranged mentality, it was a dark masterpiece.
Commercially, it also defied all expectations. Directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix, it gave us the origin story of Arthur Fleck (Joker) With a modest budget of around $55–70 million, it opened to a record-shattering $96 million domestically for an October release. It went on to gross $335 million in North America and over $1billion worldwide, making it the first R-rated film to cross the billion-dollar mark.
Critics and audiences loved its dark psychological depth, earning Phoenix an Oscar and cementing its status as a box office triumph and one of the most profitable comic book adaptations ever. It put most of the competitor Marvel movies to shame! And for a fraction of their budgets!
(After this, Covid hit and as one of the proudly unvaccinated, I was made unwelcome as I refused to mask up and go along with their pathetic little authoritarian tyrannies. And I never did go back)
Five years later, anticipation was high for Joker: Folie à Deux. The sequel introduced Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn and shifted into a jukebox musical format set largely within Arkham Asylum. However, the results were catastrophic! Facing a bloated production budget of $190–200 million (plus substantial marketing costs), the film opened to just $37–38 million domestically — less than half of the original’s Friday earnings alone. Its worldwide opening hovered around $121 million, paling in comparison to the first film’s $248 million launch. By the end of its run, Folie à Deux scraped together roughly $58 million domestically and $207–208 million globally.
The commercial collapse was swift and brutal. Audience reception tanked and it got dismal word-of-mouth, leading to one of the steepest second-weekend drops in recent memory. Critics were equally unkind. Insiders estimate Warner Bros. lost between $125 million and $200 million on the project, turning what was meant to be a victory lap into one of the studio’s biggest financial flops in years.
I suppose several factors explain the dramatic reversal. The original Joker benefited from a lean budget, cultural resonance, and originality as a standalone character study. The sequel, by contrast, carried enormous expectations and costs while alienating core fans with its stupid musical elements and narrative choices. It also arrived at a time of superhero fatigue and struggled to recapture the magic of its predecessor.
The Joker saga serves as a cautionary tale for Hollywood: even proven franchises can implode when budgets balloon and creative risks misfire with audiences. While the 2019 film redefined what comic book movies could achieve, its 2024 follow-up shows the danger of chasing diminishing returns.
The original Joker had a soul to it even if a dark one. The follow up was just slop. It’s almost like they wanted it to flop!!
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