It is not looking good for Warner Bros.’ “Joker: Folie a Deux,” which is seeing its box office estimates slide further as poor reviews from opening night audiences, including the lowest ever CinemaScore grade for a comic book film.
Currently, industry estimates have the film earning a $47 million opening weekend — roughly half of the $96 million of the first “Joker” — as opening night buzz on social media and in audience polling has been so abysmal that it might lead to lower walk-up ticket sales than what the current projections are expecting, sending the final weekend total even lower.
After earning an 0.5/5 from Thursday night moviegoers, “Folie a Deux” suffered a D grade from CinemaScore polls. For comparison, Francis Ford Coppola’s big budget bust “Megalopolis” earned a D+ last weekend while “Madame Web,” a critical and commercial bust earlier this year, got a C+.
Rotten Tomatoes scores are also negative, standing at 33% critics and 37% audience at time of writing.
With such toxic word-of-mouth, a significant second weekend drop is likely in the cards, similar to how last year’s DC film “The Flash,” which had slightly better opening weekend audience reception amid a $55 million start, fell 72% in the next frame. That’s especially bad given that “Folie a Deux” had a reported $190 million budget before marketing costs.
While we wait to see how bad it could get for “Joker 2,” Universal/DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot” is proving it is going to endure in theaters, earning an estimated $19.5 million in its second weekend that is a 46% drop from its $35 million opening.
With a 10-day total of $64 million, the DreamWorks film is well on its way to a $100 million-plus domestic run, showing the sort of long legs that the animation studio’s offerings have put forth for decades.
