It’s no surprise that Joker 2, aka Joker: Folie À Deux, failed at the box office. The sequel only earned $207.5 million worldwide with a budget ranging between $190-200 million. When comparing to its predecessor, which earned $1.079 billion with a $55-70 million budget, the difference is staggering.
Now it looks like Warner Bros., the studio behind the two films and other DC adaptations, has stepped forward to address the project’s failure. According to WB, they acknowledge that Joker 2 failed because it was “too revisionist.”
Here’s what Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs and CEOs Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca shared on that front while speaking with The Wrap regarding the divisive follow-up to Joker:
“I really liked the movie. I still do,” Abdy said, prompting De Luca to add, “It was really revisionist. It may be that it was too revisionist for a global mainstream audience, but I thought that Todd and his screenwriting partner Scott [Silver] did the thing that most people making sequels don’t do, which is they decided to not repeat themselves.”
Though they acknowledge that decision left a disconnect with their audience:
“I do give them immense props for not repeating themselves, but it just turned out to not connect with the audience.”
Of course, no one would probably disagree with Abdy and De Luca’s reasoning for the movie’s failure. It absolutely was not the sequel that fans expected. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with going a separate direction, but the reveal that Joaquin Phoenix isn’t really the Joker among other creative choices were always going to be controversial.
As such, fans will now have to wait and see what the next major adaptation for Joker and Harley Quinn will be. The DC Universe, aka DCU, still hasn’t cast anyone to play the two iconic villains. Meanwhile, Barry Keoghan played the Joker for a small appearance in The Batman, and we could very easily see him have a larger role in the upcoming sequel.
Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional DC news as we have it. As for now, the future for Warner Bros. and its library of DC characters is quite unpredictable especially with Netflix slowly gaining control of the company.