(Bloomberg) -- Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s Joker: Folie à Deux, a sequel to the 2019 hit, took in $37.7 million in ticket sales in the US and Canada in its opening weekend, data tracker Comscore Inc. said Monday, well below the prior installment.
The R-rated film’s haul compares with Boxoffice Pro estimates of $50 million to $60 million, which were lowered by half over the past month after a lukewarm response from critics following the picture’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival in early September.
The first Joker took in $96.2 million domestically in its opening weekend and went on to gross more than $1 billion globally, the highest ever for an R-rated film at the time. This weekend’s receipts suggest Folie à Deux is unlikely to replicate that.
The first film offered a much darker take on the superhero origin story, with Joaquin Phoenix portraying the titular villain from the DC Comics universe as a mentally ill man whose history of abuse turns him into a killer.
Folie à Deux, also directed by Todd Phillips, introduces singer Lady Gaga as the Joker’s love interest, Harley Quinn, and features numerous musical sequences. Globally, the picture took in $121.1 million over the weekend, and will release in China and Japan later this month.
The two-hour-plus film focuses heavily on the villain’s trial and time in the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It averaged just 33% approval among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews.
The movie ends Phillips’ involvement with the DC character. Folie à Deux is also separate from the strategy implemented in 2022 by James Gunn and Peter Safran, the co-chairmen of DC Studios, who have mapped out a 10-year plan of interweaving superhero films and television series in the style of Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios.
(Updates with final weekend total in first paragraph.)
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