DC is back on its BS
The "Joker" sequel marks the sixth straight DC flop. Can James Gunn dig the franchise out of a hole?
The Gist
The “Joker” sequel flopped this weekend with just $40 million in the US.
It marks the sixth dud in a row for DC Comics movies.
Can James Gunn’s “Superman” next year turn things around?
Welcome back to The Traverse, with the second edition of the weekend. I’m trying to make up for lost time before I step away for a couple weeks. With that, there might be one more piece coming later this week, so stay tuned. For now, enjoy and thanks for reading.
The word “unprecedented” is often overused, but it seems that “Joker: Folie à Deux” (which I’ll be referring to from now on as “Joker 2” for brevity) is living up to the title. Just not in any sort of positive way.
The movie received a rare D grade from CinemaScore, which surveys audiences on a movie’s opening night. It’s apparently the first Hollywood comic-book movie to achieve such a dishonor. Not even recent disastrous ones like “Madame Web” (C+) were that disliked by the people that saw them.
“Joker 2” seems to be doing something that no other comic-book movie in recent memory has done: alienate every conceivable audience member, from critics (33% Rotten Tomatoes score) to fans to general moviegoers.
For a mid-budget movie to do that would be more acceptable. “Joker” in 2019 cost $55 million to make and earned $96 million in the US in its opening weekend before eventually grossing over $1 billion worldwide. But the sequel reportedly cost $200 million to produce and is estimated to make around $40 million this weekend, meaning it will likely stall out in a few short weeks. Ouch.
It marks the sixth straight dud for DC Comics movies, spanning back to 2022’s “Black Adam.” Last year’s stretch was depressing: “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Blue Beetle,” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” all failed. WB had pretty much acted like last year’s movies were dead-on-arrival before they even arrived, save for “Flash,” which WBD CEO David Zaslav infamously, hilariously, and desperately called the greatest superhero movie of all time.
Marvel too has seen some disappointments in recent years, notably “The Marvels,” which grossed just over $200 million globally last year. But the blow was softened this summer by “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which is the No. 2 movie of the year so far with $1.3 billion globally. DC has experienced no such relief. Its last theatrical hit was “The Batman” in early 2022, which grossed $772 million worldwide.
In a vacuum, the failure of “Joker 2” could come down to a confusing proposition for a sequel that fails to live up to any of what made the first movie a sensation. Yes, the first is divisive, but it still earned a lot of money and got a lot of Oscar nominations. I didn’t care for it, but the elevator pitch was attractive to the average person: an origin story for Batman’s greatest foe in the style of an ‘80s crime movie. And in a year that was dominated by the more colorful MCU between “Captain Marvel,” “Endgame,” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” it offered a counter for the kind of Zack Snyder-fanboy that craved “darker” material. For Business Insider at the time, I spoke to Snyder fans that saw “Joker” as vindication. How much more can you pull from that, though, years removed from both the first “Joker” and Snyder’s influence on DC movies? After “Joker 2,” the answer seems to be: not much.
In the context of the comic-book movie ecosystem, and more specifically DC, the sequel is reminiscent of recent mistakes.
“After performing inconsistently during the pandemic, superheroes are a smaller genre now…” industry analyst David A. Gross said in his most recent newsletter. “They remain among the most powerful films in the industry…but the days of taking any secondary and tertiary character and giving them their own movie are over.”
It’s good thing then that DC is planning to reboot its film universe next year with “Superman.” It doesn’t get any less secondary or tertiary than him. But can even director James Gunn, the comic-book movie whisperer who is now in charge of DC films and TV along with producer Peter Safran, turn things around?
Superman has been a challenging character to nail on the big screen for some time, partly because Christopher Reeve’s presence still looms large even decades later. The original “Superman: The Movie” in 1978 earned $135 million in the US, which is an astonishing $650 million in today’s numbers. 2006’s “Superman Returns” grossed $312 million in the US after inflation, and 2013’s Snyder-directed “Man of Steel” a bit under $400 million. Those aren’t bad figures, but “Returns” was a Reeve continuation with little room for further exploration, and the “Man of Steel” iteration of Superman ended up carrying way too much baggage.
So Gunn’s movie, which debuts in July, has a lot riding on it, with not only resuscitating Superman for the screen, but also the entire DC movie universe, which is in a tail spin. Early proposals seemed promising, but recent reports have been head-scratching. An animated movie starring two Robins? Who is that for? A movie starring supervillains Bane and Deathstroke? If I put my comic-book nerd hat on, I can picture a Secret Six movie (about a group of B-list villains that defy their superiors) but if I put my business hat on, I picture a bust. Secondary characters! (An aside: Will this pose a problem for Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” next year?)
Further, DC’s film and TV continuity still seems to be confusing. Plans for the new DCU include a “Waller” TV show, with Viola Davis reprising her “Suicide Squad” character Amanda Waller, and a second season of “Peacemaker” is in the works. These are leftovers from the previous regime. Then there’s the standalone stuff like “The Batman” and its spinoffs like HBO’s “Penguin,” which is currently airing. It makes sense on paper to want to extract as much value from these properties as possible, but post-pandemic, convoluted IP extensions have been a turn off for audiences.
It will take a lot of work to convince people that it’s all worth their time.
RELATED: Warner Bros. woes
Warner Bros. desperately needs a win.
It kicked off the year well. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” earned a solid $571 million worldwide. “Dune: Part Two” was a hit with over $700 million worldwide (but as much as WB wants to turn it into a franchise — an HBO TV spinoff premieres this year and a third movie is likely in the works — it is far more limited than something like “Star Wars” in that regard).
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” just passed an impressive $400 million worldwide, but the vast majority of that (nearly 70%) has been from the US, a rarity for big tentpoles. WB also dropped the ball on the international rollout for “Twisters,” which grossed just $103 million outside the US, or only 28% of its global total.
But IP tentpoles “Furiosa” and now “Joker 2” were major flops, with the former only grossing $174 million globally. Kevin Costner’s “Horizon,” which WB distributed, bombed with just $30 million in the US.
I’m not sure if the upcoming anime movie “Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” will turn the studio’s luck around. Next year, its fortunes will largely rely on “Superman” as well as the video-game adaptation “Minecraft” and the fourth “Conjuring” movie. Massive *shrug.*
No Beyond the Traverse today since I just did a news roundup on Friday. See you next time!
I don't like the first Joker movie. But its success does hint that maybe we need more standalone movies and less attempts at universes. I think the universe model has also done more damage than good for Marvel in the long run.