Joker: Folie A Deux cops brutal audience score amid box office disaster

The Joker sequel is tracking for a disastrous opening weekend after earning a historically low score from opening night audiences.

Joker’s long-awaited musical sequel Folie a Deux is tracking for a disastrous opening weekend at the US box office, after earning a historically low score from opening night audiences.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, based on early takings the Joker sequel looks set to make between $US40 and $47 million at the US box office over the weekend.

That’s well below the $US70 million the film was initially predicted to earn, and less than half of the $US96.2 million the first Joker film made back in 2019, before eventually grossing more than a billion dollars worldwide.

Making matters worse, while box office takings are so far much lower this time around, the sequel cost almost four times as much as the first Joker film to make, with a budget of around $US200 million.

Audiences have given the sequel a clanger of a rating.

And audience polling company CinemaScore, who survey viewers on films’ opening nights to report on their audience appeal, today delivered a clanger of a score for Folie A Deux: “D”. It’s the only recent release to receive such a low audience rating, and it makes the film the first Hollywood comic book movie to earn a D CinemaScore (the first Joker film received a B+).

That dismal audience score would explain numerous social media reports of audiences booing, groaning and even walking out of initial screenings of the film, which runs for two hours and eighteen minutes and adds Lady Gaga as the Joker’s love interest – and a whole lot of musical numbers – into the mix.

Among those walking out were Australian Olympian Harry Garside, who vented his frustrations on social media.

“Joker 2 was the biggest f**king letdown … had enough. That sucked. It was like a musical, and I love musicals, but it was a sh*t musical,” he said.

The sequel contains around 15 musical numbers.

And the reviews have been similarly brutal: On critic aggregator site Metacritic, Folie A Deux currently has a score of 45 (down from 48 two days ago, as new reviews are published).

A sample of what the critics are saying:

“How can you screw up a movie that has Lady Gaga? Here’s how: Make it claustrophobic, with the first half a brutal prison picture and the second half an excruciatingly dull courtroom drama,” says the San Francisco Chronicle.

The New York Times calls the film “a dour, unpleasant slog,” complaining that “it is hard to know why it was made or for whom”.

Vanity Fair says the sequel is “startlingly dull, a pointless procedural that seems to disdain its audience.”

“In addition to being a lousy musical, Folie à Deux is also a dreadfully dull courtroom drama,” says the Boston Globe.

Newscorp’s own Leigh Paatsch calls the film the “greatest folly of 2024,” dubbing the film “a karaoke night in hell” in a withering one-and-a-half star review.

Neither Gaga nor Joaquin seemed keen to answer if the film was ‘everything they expected’.

And it seems perhaps even the film’s two stars aren’t exactly thrilled with the movie: In an awkward exchange going viral on social media, an interviewer for Good Morning Britainasked Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix if the finished film was “everything [they expected].”

The actors looked at each other and burst into laughter, both seemingly reluctant to answer.

“Tell ‘em how you feel, Joaquin,” Gaga told her co-star.

“Well I was there … so I did know what was going to happen,” he said. “Oh god … it’s so hard to talk about. I feel like … we achieved what we set out to do.”

Originally published as Joker: Folie A Deux cops brutal audience score amid box office disaster