Joker 2’s Box Office Failure Actually Makes 1 Other DC Movie Look Even Worse

DC’s cinematic legacy took a significant blow with the release of Joker: Folie à Deux, but its dismal performance at the global box office makes one DC movie look even worse by comparison. Despite starting incredibly strong with a billion-dollar debut, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker suffered a huge loss with his sequel. The divisive second installment picked up with Arthur Fleck incarcerated at Arkham Asylum four years after his murder spree and the televised shooting of Robert De Niro’s Murray Franklin, which sparked citywide riots in Gotham courtesy of a newfound legion of advocates rallying against Gotham’s elites.

Joker: Folie à Deux is neither DC’s lowest-grossing movie nor its worst-rated, earning around the same as the DCEU’s Birds of Prey and more than The Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman 1984. It’s a different story, however, when looking at Joker: Folie à Deux‘s performance compared to Batman movies specifically. Batman is one of DC’s most profitable superheroes, so it’s no wonder that there are so many Batman movies and spinoffs in the cinematic sphere. Unfortunately, the general reliability of the franchise stumbled with Joker: Folie à Deux.

Joker 2’s Box Office Results Were One Of The Biggest Surprises Of 2024

It Earned Just 20% Of Joker’s Total Box Office

Joker: Folie à Deux grossed just $206 million worldwide according to The Numbers, against a reported production budget of around the same ballpark. This means the movie was a bomb, spending less than a month in theaters before releasing digitally for home media. This total falls $30 million short of Batman & Robin, which was one of the worst-rated Batman movies ever released, and the death knell for Batman’s first cinematic franchise. Joker: Folie à Deux fared much better critically, though it fell significantly short of its prequel, which earned widespread acclaim albeit marred by a measure of controversy.

The fact that the sequel earned just 20% of Joker’s total box office was less predictable, especially in the same year that Joker’s record was surpᴀssed by a Marvel movie.

The extent to which Joker: Folie à Deux fell short of its predecessor is shocking. 2019’s Joker made history when it became the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time (an accolade snatched five years later by the MCU’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool & Wolverine), which made a sequel inevitable. The fact that the sequel earned just 20% of Joker‘s total box office was less predictable, especially in the same year that Joker‘s record was surpᴀssed by a Marvel movie. Joker: Folie à Deux now boasts the unfortunate accolade of being the second-lowest-grossing Batman movie of all time.

Joker 2’s Box Office Results Make Catwoman Look Even Worse Again

Catwoman Earned Less Than Half Of Joker 2’s Global Box Office

Despite taking Batman & Robin‘s spot in the bottom three, Joker: Folie à Deux is saved from being the lowest-grossing-Batman movie of all time by 2004’s Catwoman. Catwoman was an ill-fated attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Batman in general and Michelle Pfeiffer’s rendition of Catwoman in Batman Returns. Pfeiffer was originally slated to reprise her role in a leading capacity, though nearly a decade of production culminated in Halle Berry stepping in (as Patience Phillips) before the movie released in 2004 and grossed just $82 million at the global box office against a reported budget of $100 million.

This means that Joker: Folie à Deux earned more than double the global box office of Catwoman. Worse still is the fact that Joker: Folie à Deux made about as much as it cost to make (though this still makes it a bomb when factoring in additional expenses for things like marketing), whereas Catwoman fell short of its production budget by around $20 million. The widespread disapproval of Joker: Folie à Deux may have been shocking, but the fact that it beat out Catwoman to such an extent suggests that Catwoman‘s unfortunate record may never be beaten.

Why Catwoman’s Box Office Is One Of DC’s Worst

Catwoman Was Critically Lambasted Upon Release

While Batman Returns was the perfect follow-up to Tim Burton’s iconic Batman in 1992 and met with around the same level of approval, DC’s first Batman film franchise would only go downhill from there. Catwoman languished in development hell for several years until the character’s popularity had faded by the time the movie was released in 2004. Still, the overall quality of Catwoman is mostly to blame for its financial failures, as it was universally panned upon release and is still regarded as one of the worst comic book movies ever made.

Halle Berry earned a Razzie Award for her performance in Catwoman, which she good-naturedly accepted in person while holding her Oscar.

Catwoman was slammed from just about every angle, though two major contributors to its critical failure were the baffling decision to distance the character from Batman entirely and generally running roughshod over Catwoman’s comic book origins and costume. It’s here that parallels are drawn between Catwoman and Joker: Folie à Deux as the latter also prompted criticism for doing away with one glaring factor that made the ill-fated franchise so popular to begin with: the Joker himself. Joker: Folie à Deux ended with Fleck relinquishing the mantle before being killed – a bold decision that ultimately didn’t pay off.