Box office preview: Joaquin Phoenix teams up with Lady Gaga for ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’
Is everyone ready for an October packed full of sequels? Because that’s exactly what we’re getting this week, with not one, but two new sequels! Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.
Warner Bros. delivered the biggest hit of September with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and they hope to follow that up with “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the oddly-titled sequel to the 2019 global hit “Joker,” which grossed $1 billion worldwide with $335 million of that coming from North America after a $96.2 million opening. Before “Deadpool and Wolverine” was released this past summer, it was the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.
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Director Todd Phillips returns with Joaquin Phoenix once again playing the role of Arthur Fleck, aka the Joker, for which he won the Oscar in 2020, while Zazie Beetz is also back. The big addition to the cast though is pop superstar Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, her first major film role since starring in “House of Gucci” (2021). Before that, she received an Oscar nomination for her performance in Bradley Cooper‘s remake of “A Star is Born” (2018), and won for co-writing the song “Shallow.”
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Since claiming his Oscar, Phoenix has taken on smaller movies like Mike Mills‘ “C’mon, C’mon” and Ari Aster‘s “Beau is Afraid,” neither which showcased Phoenix’s new-found draw as a box office star. Last year, Phoenix also took on the title role in Ridley Scott‘s “Napoleon,” which grossed $61.5 million domestic and $156.4 million overseas.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September where it racked up mixed reviews, currently at 63% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s only slightly lower than the reviews for the first “Joker” movie, which received a significantly higher Audience Score.
It’s important to bear in mind that Joker is essentially Batman’s greatest villain, which is why Phillips’ previous movie performed more like a Batman movie after the success of Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder‘s turns with that character. Returning to the Joker character and being joined by Lady Gaga certainly seems like two major factors that should appeal to a similar mass audience.
Oh, and did we mention that the sequel is also a musical with songs and dancing and everything? It probably isn’t worth delving too far into the history of musicals at the box office, since Warner Bros. has been going out of their way to hide that fact, but it likely contributed to those early reviews and future ones.
Despite any positives, early tracking and ticket sales seem to be lower than some expected, which might keep “Joker: Folie à Deux” from joining the $100 million opening club, but it should be good for $80 million or more, especially if response to the movie leans more positive after its Monday night previews.
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The hits keep a-comin’ for Lionsgate, as they finally release “White Bird: A Wonder Story,” the follow-up spin-off to its 2017 hit “Wonder,” which grossed $132 million domestically and $310.7 million worldwide. With that kind of success, it made sense to go back to the well, this sequel being adapted from R.J. Palacio‘s follow-up to his earlier graphic novel. This one follows Bryce Gheisar‘s Julian Albans, one of the kids that bullied Jacob Tremblay‘s Auggie in “Wonder,” but more importantly, it stars the one and only Oscar winner, Helen Mirren, as Julian’s grandmother, who tells him stories about living in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. In a way, it’s actually a Holocaust film narrated by Mirren, that seems to have little to do with “Wonder.” It’s a little strange to think that a sequel to such a huge hit could end up bombing, but Lionsgate has been struggling, and this movie, directed by Marc Forster (“Quantum of Solace”), was delayed for two years, which is worrisome, though Lionsgate brought on the Erwin Brothers‘ Kingdom Story Company to try to appeal to the faith-based crowd. Even with that in mind, expect “White Bird” to struggle to make between $3 and $5 million this weekend, though that should be enough to scrape its way into the Top 5.
There’s also something called “Monster Summer” from distributor Pastime Pictures, which stars Mel Gibson and Lorraine Bracco from “The Sopranos.” Apparently, it’s a horror-adventure following a group of “Goonies”-like kids trying to save their island, but does anyone even know this movie exists?
As far as limited releases, Saoirse Ronan stars in Nora Fingscheidt‘s drama “The Outrun,” based on the memoir by Amy Liptrot about her struggles with alcohol that led her to a remote island off of Scotland. Ronan’s been getting awards buzz ever since the film debuted at Sundance, but we’ll have to see what kind of release Sony Classics gives this.
“Things Will Be Different” is a time-hopping crime thriller from Michael Felker, starring Adam David Thompson and Riley Dandy, which Magnet Releasing will give a limited release this weekend. It’s about siblings on the run after committing a robbery who face a mysterious force while hiding in a farmhouse.
Similarly, Music Box Films is releasing quirky French auteur Quentin Dupieux‘s 12th feature film in the past 17 years with “Daaaaaali!” about a French journalist meeting with the surrealist Salvador Dali to make a documentary.
Lastly, there’s the National Geographic doc “Blink,” directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher (“Navalny”) and Edmund Stenson about the Pelletier family from Montreal, three of their children having been diagnosed with the blinding disorder, retinitis pigmentosa. The doc follows them on a trip around the world for the kids to make new visual experiences before losing their sight.
Check back on Sunday to see if any of these other movies can have any sort of impact against the new Joker movie.
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