The sequel to Todd Phillips’ smash hit Joker, the movie musical known as Joker: Folie a Deux, was far from the hit the original was, but some people liked it, namely Warner Bros. heads of film Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca, who stand by the 2024 box office flop despite its reception.
“I really liked the movie. I still do,” Abdy told TheWrap in a recent interview alongside De Luca, who added: “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. I do give them immense props for not repeating themselves, but it just turned out to not connect with the audience.”
The negative critical reception and financial failure of the film, which featured returning star Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker and Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, led to rumors that the two WB execs were potentially going to be ousted from their high profile positions at the time.
The shift in tone from gritty crime drama to introspective courtroom drama jukebox musical didn’t resonate with audiences, according to the box office. It amassed $207 million worldwide, which is a far cry from the original film’s enormous $1 billion box office. Plus, the film had a reported budget of about $200 million, so the gross alone is an easy financial failure before you even take the first film’s returns into account.
Reviews were wholly negative for the project — IGN said the film “[wasted] its potential” at the time of release — and it failed to receive any major awards nominations, unlike its predecessor, which was recognized for two Academy Awards out of a solid nine nominations.
However, according to these execs, these incidents come with the territory of their jobs. “You get a veteran’s thick skin,” De Luca said. “I’ve certainly had flops in my history. I have been lucky enough to have hits in my history. But I try to remember something someone told me once: Everyone has flops, but not everyone has hits. You just try not to torture the ones that don’t work.”
In January last year, Lady Gaga opened up about the negative reception to Joker: Folie à Deux after a period of silence following its release. “People just sometimes don’t like some things,” Gaga said. “It’s that simple. And I think to be an artist, you have to be willing for people to sometimes not like it. And you keep going even if something didn’t connect in the way that you intended.”
“When that makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of,” Gaga said of the fear of failure. “It’s part of the mayhem.”
For more on Joker 2, you can see why Quentin Tarantino says he loved the sequel, and why Hideo Kojima believes the movie’s reception will change over time.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
