Joker: Folie à Deux Weekend Thread

[Krissykins]

8 minutes ago, JimmyB said:

There's no floor anymore how low a big blockbuster wide release movie can open too.  I had a few employees Friday say they heard the Joker is terrible. I know they just saw it on TikTok. TikTok has changed how fast word of mouth can spread. I think it works the other way as well. It's why movies that open huge post Covid almost always have a great 2nd weekend drop. Tiktok videos get people to see Barbie, Top Gun or DxW that 2nd weekend when they have no interest in seeing movies in theaters. 

 

Joker went from could it open to 55m, to maybe 50m yesterday, to under 45m today.  I think it ends up grossing under Halloween Ends. Inside Out 2 and DxW almost making it into the Domestic top ten and the Joker crashing and burning like Halloween freaking Ends is just crazy. It still makes following the box office exciting.     

Funny you mention Halloween Ends actually, it’s a similar wtf idea.

 

 

But Joker 2 actually reminded me a lot of Halloween II (2009), which was also a “what was the director thinking?” fiasco. 

Edited 21 hours ago by Krissykins

[Kon]

13 minutes ago, JimmyB said:

There's no floor anymore how low a big blockbuster wide release movie can open too.  I had a few employees Friday say they heard the Joker is terrible. I know they just saw it on TikTok. TikTok has changed how fast word of mouth can spread. I think it works the other way as well. It's why movies that open huge post Covid almost always have a great 2nd weekend drop. Tiktok videos get people to see Barbie, Top Gun or DxW that 2nd weekend when they have no interest in seeing movies in theaters. 

 

Joker went from could it open to 55m, to maybe 50m yesterday, to under 45m today.  I think it ends up grossing under Halloween Ends. Inside Out 2 and DxW almost making it into the Domestic top ten and the Joker crashing and burning like Halloween freaking Ends is just crazy. It still makes following the box office exciting.     

Under 40M OW for Joker 2 seems a real possibility now.

Edited 21 hours ago by Kon

[AN9815]

I must say this is the biggest surprise of the year for me by far. I never expected Joker 2 to be struggling to make $40m OW. This is a total disaster. About a month ago I said on the Joker 2 thread that this would easily make +$100m OW and possibly go up to $140m. I had seen the reviews (around 62% on Rottentomatoes at that time) and I thought the worse case scenario was a huge opening followed by terrible legs, like Batman v Superman or Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I thought there was real interest in this movie, the first one is very well liked and had incredible legs, specially overseas. Prior to reviews, personally I thought it was going to slightly increase WW like Guardians Vol.1 to Guardians Vol.2 and even with the arguments of "the first one was a cultural phenomenon that cannot be replicated" I thought it would still decrease like Wakanda Forever from first Black Panther or The Last Jedi from The Force Awakens, whose first movies were also cultural phenomenons that couldn't be replicated. This is joining The Marvels and Alice Through the Looking Glass in movies whose predecessors made $1b WW and sequel couldn't even surpass $300m WW, with the difference that Captain Marvel and Alice in Wonderland were not nearly as well received as Joker and that The Marvels and Alice Through the Looking Glass were not as poorly received as Joker 2, for better or worse. 

[Kon]

11 minutes ago, AN9815 said:

I must say this is the biggest surprise of the year for me by far. I never expected Joker 2 to be struggling to make $40m OW. This is a total disaster. About a month ago I said on the Joker 2 thread that this would easily make +$100m OW and possibly go up to $140m. I had seen the reviews (around 62% on Rottentomatoes at that time) and I thought the worse case scenario was a huge opening followed by terrible legs, like Batman v Superman or Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I thought there was real interest in this movie, the first one is very well liked and had incredible legs, specially overseas. Prior to reviews, personally I thought it was going to slightly increase WW like Guardians Vol.1 to Guardians Vol.2 and even with the arguments of "the first one was a cultural phenomenon that cannot be replicated" I thought it would still decrease like Wakanda Forever from first Black Panther or The Last Jedi from The Force Awakens, whose first movies were also cultural phenomenons that couldn't be replicated. This is joining The Marvels and Alice Through the Looking Glass in movies whose predecessors made $1b WW and sequel couldn't even surpass $300m WW, with the difference that Captain Marvel and Alice in Wonderland were not nearly as well received as Joker and that The Marvels and Alice Through the Looking Glass were not as poorly received as Joker 2, for better or worse. 

 

I think Joker 2 could be suffering an "Anti-hype" reception.

 

In the past, you would expect bad WOM to affect the legs for the second weekend. However, as it was mentioned, WOM seems to moving faster (thanks to TikTok). 

 

So, it's possible the bad WOM has already spread so much that has killed almost all interest on this movie.

Edited 21 hours ago by Kon

[Grand Cine]

 

[AJG]

Would it be possible to have a “JUST THE NUMBERS” thread so we don’t have to wade through all this conversation?

[Kon]

8 minutes ago, AJG said:

Would it be possible to have a “JUST THE NUMBERS” thread so we don’t have to wade through all this conversation?

Well, you don't need a forum for that. You could just see the websites on twitter (like BoxOfficeReport) that reveal these numbers.

Edited 21 hours ago by Kon

[Eric Quinn]

8 minutes ago, AJG said:

Would it be possible to have a “JUST THE NUMBERS” thread so we don’t have to wade through all this conversation?

I mean once we get actual numbers, the conversation will pivot. I’m pretty sure this whole “are CBMs dead tho” conversation is about to wrap up now. And if not? Then I’ll use my mod powers to stop it when I think it’s needed. Now is not the time.

[Cookson]

Wait wait wait… are you telling me Alien Romulus has a shot beating Joker 2’s total dom gross and dom opening? Holy moly

Edited 21 hours ago by Cookson

[YM!]

2 hours ago, TomThomas said:

You are missing the point, before covid they watched almost any superhero movie no matter quality, covid and superhero genre decline made people much more selective.

Let me tell you a story of the boom of CG animation movies in the early 2000s vs now. Back in the early to mid 2000s, was kind of like the superhero genre now but on a smaller scale. Everything CG animated was some form of hit, quality could get you to great heights yes but you’d be a hit regardless because of how cool it was. Even obvious death crossing stuff like Chicken Little which tracking said would be lucky to hit 25m OW and had Disney’s worse reviews when they were in a slump similar to right now - overperformed to a $40m OW - Disney Animation’s highest OW at the time. Then 2006 happened when you had shit like Doogal, Everyone’s Hero, Barnyard and almost 20 animated CGI movies in a year with most of them being mediocre. From 2007 onward, quality or brand became an important factor on whether you hit or not. Covid especially with streaming being an easy babysitter help speed things up farther.

My point is the superhero genre is at where CG animation was in that period, with warning signs starting in 2019 after Shazam underperformed. You either need an A-lister hero, have great reception with the GA audience or both. Like a lot of CBMs this decade, Joker didn’t fit the criteria (also do think Joker was somewhat of a one-hit wonder in that the people who checked it out because it was different wouldn’t return because for them, Joker was a one and done). Yes, this means not all CBMs can easily hit $600m WW but for the sake of maintaining the brands, the most important thing right now is that they’re good. Do I think the vast majority of CBMs aside from TF4 and Superman will underperform next year, yes. Same for 2026 aside from Spidey, Avengers and Batman. The most important thing now is that quality is improved.

[GambitPool]

5 minutes ago, Cookson said:

Wait wait wait… are you telling me Alien Romulus has a shot beating Joker 2’s total dom gross and dom opening? Holy moly

I think it already has lol. 

[Cooper Legion]

1 hour ago, TomThomas said:

Generic mediocrity was more rewarded back then.

This is exactly the problem with this whole line of analysis lol. People who don’t understand what made the 2010s ones much more pleasing to audiences are unable to understand that the difference is being driven by change in movies rather than change in audience becasue they don’t perceive the change in the movies!

[Cooper Legion]

If you think CM2 was about as good as CM1, or AM3 was bout as good as AM2, thw conclusions you’re going to come to are just going to be absurd. You’re entitled to whatever personal opinion on them you want but that is objectively not what the GA thinks about their quality, not even close to close to close.  
 

You will observe a change in outcome, and reason (falsely) that it wasn’t caused by a difference in movies so must be down to change in environment. But that’s totally fallacious. There was a huge change in movies that drove the change in outcome you just can’t notice it — luckily we have lots of data on aggregate reception, so you can use that to figure out what’s going on if you’re willing to let your personal interpretations not cloud the reasoning.

Edited 20 hours ago by Cooper Legion

[TomThomas]

15 minutes ago, Cooper Legion said:

This is exactly the problem with this whole line of analysis lol. People who don’t understand what made the 2010s ones much more pleasing to audiences are unable to understand that the difference is being driven by change in movies rather than change in audience becasue they don’t perceive the change in the movies!

They were more consistent, but I don't see how Captain Marvel and Ant-Man 2 are any better than Doc Strange 2 or Black Widow. In fact, Deadpool & Wolverine got worse critics reception than Ant-Man 2, which I doubt would've happened years ago.

[TomThomas]

28 minutes ago, YM! said:

Let me tell you a story of the boom of CG animation movies in the early 2000s vs now. Back in the early to mid 2000s, was kind of like the superhero genre now but on a smaller scale. Everything CG animated was some form of hit, quality could get you to great heights yes but you’d be a hit regardless because of how cool it was. Even obvious death crossing stuff like Chicken Little which tracking said would be lucky to hit 25m OW and had Disney’s worse reviews when they were in a slump similar to right now - overperformed to a $40m OW - Disney Animation’s highest OW at the time. Then 2006 happened when you had shit like Doogal, Everyone’s Hero, Barnyard and almost 20 animated CGI movies in a year with most of them being mediocre. From 2007 onward, quality or brand became an important factor on whether you hit or not. Covid especially with streaming being an easy babysitter help speed things up farther.

My point is the superhero genre is at where CG animation was in that period, with warning signs starting in 2019 after Shazam underperformed. You either need an A-lister hero, have great reception with the GA audience or both. Like a lot of CBMs this decade, Joker didn’t fit the criteria (also do think Joker was somewhat of a one-hit wonder in that the people who checked it out because it was different wouldn’t return because for them, Joker was a one and done). Yes, this means not all CBMs can easily hit $600m WW but for the sake of maintaining the brands, the most important thing right now is that they’re good. Do I think the vast majority of CBMs aside from TF4 and Superman will underperform next year, yes. Same for 2026 aside from Spidey, Avengers and Batman. The most important thing now is that quality is improved.

Maybe, but the problem is quality decline can affect good product as well because people are fed up. The only exceptions are hugely hyped cameo fest crossovers because they have massive interest beforehand.

[JimmyB]

1 hour ago, Krissykins said:

Funny you mention Halloween Ends actually, it’s a similar wtf idea.

 

 

But Joker 2 actually reminded me a lot of Halloween II (2009), which was also a “what was the director thinking?” fiasco. 

Good call on Zombie's Halloween 2.  Zombie said im cooking up whatever I want with this one F everyone.

[Eric Quinn]

Moderation

 

Alright @Cooper Legion @TomThomas it’s clear neither of you will see eye to eye here, and people are already growing tired of this argument. I think it’s time to give it a rest. If you still want to argue, you can do it privately 

[JWR]

34 minutes ago, Cookson said:

Wait wait wait… are you telling me Alien Romulus has a shot beating Joker 2’s total dom gross and dom opening? Holy moly

 

Unthinkable 6 months ago. But here we are...

[TwoMisfits]

So, is it time for $4 national cinema day next weekend?  We could be looking at a ROUGH holiday weekend next weekend with the current slate...

 

[MightyDargon]

Okay.

How much do you think Gladiator 2 will beat Joker 2 by?