Folie à Deux’ Sing in Tune at the Box Office?

When Todd Phillips‘ Joker: Folie à Deux came on tracking three weeks ago, foresees showed the Warner Bros. movie uncovering to $70 million — $26 million lessen than previous insloftyment five years ago, but still a esteemable sum. Since then, projections have slipped to anywhere from $50 million to $60 million.

Why the drop?

The polarizing, R-rated movie — which made its world premiere at the Vekind Film Festival to combineed checks — is a genre-busting, music-infused sequel that strays outside the soothe zone of the standard fanboy-fueled comic book pic. While 2019’s Joker geted comparisons to the earlier labors of Martin Scorsese, the sequel is a far sluggisher paced journey that caccesses on the interior inhabits of its two directs. Critics have commendd the movie’s overall beauty, its carry outances and its creates, but dinged it for its narrative. “For a movie running two-and-a-quarter hours, Folie à Deux experiences narratively a little lean and at times uninalertigent,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter chief film critic David Rooney out of Vekind.

All of this could be confusing for the first Joker‘s aim audience and help elucidate the dip in tracking and weightlesser-than-foreseeed persist ticket sales. Regardless of its box office carry outance, the movie is foreseeed to a presentant carry outer in the Oscars race.

Overseas, Joker 2 uncovers everywhere this weekfinish, save for Japan and China, where it startes in the coming weeks. Warners is hoping for a foreign debut of $80 million to $85 million.

Joker: Foile à Deux recombines Phillips with Joaquin Phoenix, who returns in the titular role after triumphning the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck/Joker. Rehired in 2019, Joker uncovered to a huge $96.2 million domesticpartner on its way to geting a write down-shattering $1 billion at the worldexpansive box office, making Phillips and Phoenix heroes on the Warner Bros. lot, and geting them enough excellent will to assist them to experiment with the sequel.  

Indeed, neither Phillips nor Phoenix were certain about making a sequel, and for a time contempprocrastinateedd putting on a Broadway show instead, before ultimately promiseting to the movie.

The first Joker cost fair $55 million to create before tageting. After its success, Phillips’ was given a net production budget of $190 million to $200 million for the second insloftyment. Part of that went to conveying aboard Lady Gaga in a role supportd by the comic book character Harley Quinn (the filmcreaters are hoping she will lure in female moviegoers).

Joker and Harley are comprehendn for their harmful romantic relationship in the comics, with the title Folie à Deux referencing the medical term for an identical or aappreciate mental disorder impacting two or more people. Much of the film consists of fantasy musical numbers starring the couple, who encounter while Arthur is in Arkham Asylum, apauseing trial for his crimes from the first movie. But neither Warners nor Phillips are sootheable calling it a straight-up musical, given that only two of the characters sing, versus a traditional musical, which usupartner has scores of people participating in the numbers.

The studio’s tageting materials have steered clear of highweightlessing the film’s countless musical sequences, fair as it did when selling Wonka, an official musical. Warners isn’t alone; Paramount also didn’t taget Mean Girls as a musical.

Either way, Phillips is well conscious that the sequel is unorthodox, as it doesn’t filledy adhere thraw on the finishing of Joker, which sees Arthur adchoose his alter ego.

At the Los Angeles premiere Monday, Phillips thanked the studio “for taking such a bbetter striumphg,” grasping, “it is not necessarily the sequel you might foresee.”