‘Joker: Folie a Deux’ Crashes to ‘Morbius’- Level $40 Million Box Office Opening

The negative word-of-mouth around Warner Bros.’ “Joker: Folie à Deux” is already dealing big blows to its box office fortunes. After making just $11.1 million on Saturday — a drop from the $20.1 million earned Friday even after the $7 million from Thursday previews are removed — opening weekend estimates have now fallen to $39 million.

Not only is that below the $50-55 million pre-weekend projections and just 40% of the October record $96 million opening of the first “Joker” in 2019, but it is now nearly matching the $39 million opening of Sony’s maligned 2022 Marvel film “Morbius” and could slip even below that should walk-up ticket sales continue to sag.

Todd Phillips’ film, a courthouse drama with dream musical sequences, has seen its Rotten Tomatoes score fall to 33% critics and 31% audience. CinemaScore polls yielded a D, the lowest grade ever for a comic book film.

At this rate, it would not be surprising to see “Joker 2” fall below $10 million in its second weekend, given the recent trend of wide releases with poor audience scores falling off even faster than they did before the pandemic. Theaters are still doing better than they were last year with overall grosses still up, but they will have to do this month without a huge jolt similar to the ones they got from the opening weekends of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s” last year.

More to come…

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