Despite flopping at the domestic box office with a sub-$40 million debut, Warner Bros. Discovery’s and DC Studios’ Joker: Folie à Deux got a reprieve from international markets to the tune of $80 million, and will limp to $120 million global.
Joaquin Phoenix stars in “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
Make no mistake, nobody’s breathing a sigh of relief here or popping champaign corks over these numbers. The reprieve for Todd Phillips’ sequel is, after all, surely just temporary. It appears not even the addition of Lady Gaga’s fanbase and inspired album to the Joaquin Phoenix-led musical are providing much if any assistance.
Foreign reviews and audience scores for this nearly $200 million-budgeted sequel to 2019’s billion dollar blockbuster Joker are as bad as the widely negative domestic reception.
North American viewers graded Joker: Folie à Deux a D via Cinemascore, and it’s falling in the same general range in other markets. Likewise, the 33% Rotten Tomatoes score is mirrored in the overwhelmingly negative foreign press reviews.
What this means is, don’t expect strong holds or a large final multiplier. Even a generous 50% week to week drop would put Joker: Folie à Deux at a high-end $320 million final worldwide box office cume, off current markets (a relevant factor, which I’ll address, but keep in mind China and Japan lie ahead on the release calendar).
That’s a 2.6x final multiplier (a final multiplier is just the opening weekend box office compared to the film’s final total box office — so a film that opens at $100 million and finishes with $320 million would have a 3.2x final multiplier, or $320 million divided by $100 million).
On the low end, a 2.15x final multiplier and a $260 million finish could be closer to accurate for Joker: Folie à Deux’s future, based on what all of this weekend’s numbers suggest about probable week-to-week declines.
My early expectation is a 2.2x final multiplier, for a roughly $265 million worldwide final tally from current markets, and based on presuming conservative but not basement-level weekday attendance (I’ll return to these points momentarily).
Now, returning to the point about China and Japan still ahead on Joker: Folie à Deux’s rollout, the first Joker took a healthy $46 million in Japan, but lacked a release in China. The Flash, however, grossed almost $26 million in China, while Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom pulled in a great $65 million by comparison.
Joker: Folie à Deux is overall doing worse than those comps, however. So if we apply relative declines in Japan and China based on the differences in other markets so far, we might expect a high-end $55 million total combined additional box office from these two upcoming markets.
Even the high-end $320 million outcome for Joker: Folie à Deux only rises to $375 million with those additional ticket sales from China and Japan factor in, while the low-end rises to $315 million and my own initial prediction climbs to $320 million. So we could call $350 million a good middle ground estimate in this scenario so far.
Which is, obviously, already disastrous.
More disastrous, however, is that this math presumes modest but still “okay” weekday box office numbers for Joker: Folie à Deux.
Returning now to the initial math, there’s actually no real reason to think the negative impact of the reviews, audience scores, and news of all these bad numbers won’t drive down upcoming weekday attendance even worse.
So the actual outcome for Joker: Folie à Deux could wind up much worse, and we could be looking at a total collapse beyond even the above gloomy math. In that case, it could finish as low as $220-280 million when the dust settles.
Now, if we look for a middle ground again between the highest outcomes and lowest outcomes, it looks like right around $300 million. This sets up a range of about $300-350 million as the moderate estimated final outcome for Joker: Folie à Deux, with a wide swing from $220 million to $375 million as outlier scenarios.
The problem is that all signs suggest Joker: Folie à Deux is very much an outlier scenario, of the worst sort. And that leads me to my prediction that it will finish in the $250-300 million range. I’ll revise that if by mid-week it’s clear the film is indeed dying a fast death, and if next weekend’s sales are below 40% of opening weekend.
No matter which outcome turns out most accurate, it’s already clear Deadpool & Wolverine will retain the crown as biggest R-rated film in history at $1.3 billion.