How Much Money Might Joker 2 Lose?

Joker 2 opened in North America with a mere 30 percent of even the low end of the figure at the bottom end of the range in the forecast that Boxoffice Pro issued a mere month before the movie's release (just $37 million, against the $115 million that had been the "floor" of their expectation). After that no one seems to have thought "legs" might save the movie, but the movie's first-to-second weekend drop confirmed the expectation of the collapse continuing--the figure a rarely seen 81 percent--with the third weekend seeing another drop almost as bad (68 percent). Thus after ten days in release the movie had made a mere $52 million, after seventeen days just $56 million. (By contrast even that likely biggest loser of last year, the similarly DC debacle The Flash, managed $55 million in its first three day period, and had just under $100 million when its third weekend take was in.)

At this rate Joker 2 may not even reach the $60 million mark domestically, while it is hard to picture it getting very far over the $200 million mark globally. Assuming the studio keeps half of that it will end up with $100 million or so net, while (barring this being one of those movies that fails in theaters but explodes in post-theatrical venues) doing only as well in streaming and the other post-theatrical arenas, leaving it with a net not much above $200 million, against outlays that may have been in the $300 million+ range. That works out to a $100 million+ gap, with a recent Variety report indicating the loss as possibly twice that ($150-$200 million).

The worst loss posited for any movie so far this year (even the commercial catastrophe of Furiosa, the loss on which was reportedly in the $75-$95 million range), this makes it a very strong candidate for the top of Deadline's list of the year's biggest losers next spring. However, that is far from the whole story, the film's performance also a reminder of the prospect that the entertainment press does not want to talk about, namely that the theatrical market has changed structurally. On average the public goes to the movies twice a year now instead of the 3-4 times they went in the 2010s and the 4-5 times they went before, all of which has made them pickier about what they give those trips to the theater over to--all as the old blockbuster model may be failing in getting them to do that. Admittedly Joker did not fit that model very closely, and the sequel may have been even further removed from that model still (with its distance from the pretense of being an origin story for a supervillain, its sharp generic shifts from the original, etc.), but the expectation that people would show up for Number Two because they responded to Number One is very much part of that model, and part of what the backers were counting on, and did not work this time--though I doubt anyone who counts for very much in the film world will take the lesson. Instead they will cleave to the old saws about keeping the creatives under tight control rather than letting them chase visions, as, drawing confidence from Deadpool's delivering the boffo b.o. they were so desperate to see a franchise film make (the $1.3 billion they might have hoped the Joker would make), they go on trying to shamelessly milk any and every franchise they can for generic material--and then make excuses for people not showing up irrelevant to the real issue.