Lady Gaga breaks her silence on Joker 2 box office flop

The actor and singer has finally addressed the dismal performance of Joker 2, in which she starred as Harley Quinn.

Harley has heard the critics on Joker 2.

Lady Gaga addressed how the 2024 DC sequel completely flopped in a new interview with Elle.

“People just sometimes don’t like some things. It’s that simple,” Gaga, 38, said in the cover story, published on Tuesday.

“And I think to be an artist, you have to be willing for people to sometimes not like it,” she explained, reports the New York Post. “And you keep going even if something didn’t connect in the way that you intended.”

The House of Gucci star noted that when the fear of failure “makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of. It’s part of the mayhem.”

Gaga played Harley Quinn in the sequel to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker movie.

While 2019’s Joker was a massive success, grossing over $1 billion and winning Phoenix, 50, the Academy Award for Best Actor, director Todd Phillips’ follow-up had a very different outcome.

Lady Gaga – pictured as Harley Quinn alongside Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck – has opened up about Joker 2's dismal performance.

Joker: Folie à Deux was bashed by fans upon its release in October 2024, and many audience members even walked out of the theatres in the middle of the movie.

It grossed only $207 million worldwide on an estimated $200 million budget. According to Variety, the film lost Warner Bros. between $150 million and $200 million in its theatrical run.

Critics had negative reactions to Joker 2, as well. The sequel has a 31% critics and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, while the original has a 68% critics score and an 88% audience score.

The Post’s movie critic Johnny Oleksinski called the sequel “pointless” in his review, and said the musical numbers were “frightfully awkward and don’t add anything meaningful or worthwhile.”

She described failure as “part of the mayhem”. Picture: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for WarnerMedia

Tim Dillon, who had a brief role in Joker 2 as a guard at Arkham Asylum, said it was the “worst film ever made” on Joe Rogan’s podcast in November.

“We would sit there, me and these other guys were all dressed in these security outfits because we’re working at the Arkham Asylum, and I would turn to one of them and we’d hear this crap and I’d go, ‘What the f**k is this?’ ” the comedian shared. “And they’d go, ‘This is going to bomb, man.’ I go, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.’”

Dillon also called out the sequel — which follows Phoenix’s Athur Fleck/Joker falling in love with Gaga’s Harley Quinn at Arkham — for having “no plot.”

Before Joker 2 came out, Gaga emphasised that her portrayal of Harley Quinn was very much her own.

“You know, my version of Harley is mine and it’s very authentic to this movie and these characters,” she told Access Hollywood last year. “I’ve never done anything like I’ve done in this movie before, so it’s all going to be completely brand new and really fun.”

Margot Robbie previously took on the character in the DC films Suicide Squad (2016), Birds of Prey (2020) and The Suicide Squad (2021).

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.

Originally published as Lady Gaga breaks her silence on Joker 2 box office flop