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A lot of things went wrong withJoker: Folie à Deux. But the worst one of all was Todd Phillips’ misguided belief that marrying the maniacal Batman villain who revels in chaos, carves up his face for laughs, and kills people as an afterthought withLa La Landwould be a good idea.Joker 2does not work as a fantasy derivative of some rom-com musical. The film only works if it remembers what, or ratherwho, it is marketing – the Joker.
Meanwhile, Phillips, propelled by the success of his 2019 film, perhaps grew too lax to understand the weight of the sequel. The first film, made on a $60 million budget, earned $1.1 billion by the end of its theatrical run. The sequel, with a budget of $200 million, now ranks lower thanMadame Web(which was laughable at best) and struggles to cross the $100 million ceiling, let alone break even at the box office.
All of it makes one question: IfJoker 2was a genuine miscalculation on Warner Bros.’s part or if it was Phillips’s wilful ignorance that caused the sequel to self-destruct?
Todd Phillips Makes a Few Questionable Choices
2 months after the tectonic shift at Warner Bros. Discovery that witnessed the formation of DC Studios and the hiring ofJames Gunnand Peter Safran as its co-parents,Todd Phillipsbegan production on the long-awaitedJokersequel in December 2022. WithJoker 2as the working title, Phillips launched on a strange mission to make a musical confined in the mad, mad world of Arkham.
Stranger still was the director’s insistence on bypassing the newly-appointed DC Studios chiefs, James Gunn and Peter Safran, to liaise directly with Warner Bros. heads, Michael de Luca and Pam Abdy. When asked if the inlay of power structure had changed in DC after Walter Hamada’s exit and if Gunn & Safran would be hands-on with the production ofJoker 2, Phillips simply said,“With all due respect to them, this is kind of a Warner Bros. movie.”
Soon enough, rumors of friction within the DC factions began to take shape. Meanwhile, Todd Phillips merrily went along making his musical, ignoring the loud clamoring of the fanbase who refused to accept how a genre movie based on the Joker, of all people, could do well with a song and dance number. Furthermore, Phillips refused to screen his film in front of a test audience, claiming that the movie contained spoilers that, if leaked, would ruin the experience for the real audience. A source involved with the film reported:
No one could get through to Todd. And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don’t listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you’re going to fail.
Todd Phillips’ Joker 2 Didn’t Just Hurt WB Financially, it Made Things With Christopher Nolan Messier: ‘He thought people would get the joke’
With free rein from de Luca and Abdy (who were too worried to censure their prized director who clearly understood the business enough to land a billion-dollar indie-noir superhero blockbuster) and by refusing to be overseen by the new DC Studios chiefs, Todd Phillips createdJoker 2in a vacuum. There was no way of knowing if the sequel was marketable as a blockbuster or if it was too niche for commercial fanfare and too artsy for an audience waiting to see an escalation of the crime and madness that underlined and defined the first film.
Joker 2Ignores the DC Brand and WB Pays the Price
Insiders associated with the director and sources directly involved with the making ofJoker 2revolted against the director’s questionable decisions in a new report published byVariety. Rage and confusion of similar intensity flooded in from every direction as concerned parties all asked the same question: Why would Todd Phillips so blatantly ignore the brand of his own film, only to fail so spectacularly in the aftermath?
An insider revealed toVarietythat the director “wanted nothing to do with DC,” although it is unclear whether the decision was based on creative reasons or personal choice. A source who was aware of the internal friction between Phillips and the DC Studios chiefs broke down the root problem with the film:
If the first movie was about some down-on-his-luck, mentally ill guy in a downtrodden city, it makes maybe $150 [million] worldwide. Not a billion. People showed up becausethat guywas Joker.
After the early screenings verified what the fanbase had feared for too long,Rolling Stonewrote in their review,“‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Has a Message for Fans: Go F-ck Yourselves.”Meanwhile, with no DC logo on the title card or even in the first few opening minutes ofJoker 2, it was clear that Todd Phillips was taking the job of distancing himself from DC too far.
The Real Clown is Todd Phillips for Using The Worst MCU Twist in Joker 2 That Sealed its Fate Before Release
Fans have been seething too as social media witnessed an influx of angry tweets in the days since the film’s premiere:
DC has given far too many directors like this the keys to these characters.So glad that James Gunn is now in charge.
James Gunn’s input would have helped this film tremendously.Very bad decision by Phillips.
It was a weird situation with Joker 2 being greenlit before DC shook up its structure.
I mean, he deserved creative control after the success of the first film. He just completely blew it with the choices he made on the sequel.
Looks like Phillips knows DC’s mess isn’t worth his time! 🤷♂️ Smart move or just plain stubbornness? 💭
The fallout from all the confusion and cacophony hurt Warner Bros. the most. Already recovering from a vulnerable economic position after the 2022 merger, the film was a massive black eye for Warner Bros. Discovery. Box-office analyst Jeff Bock says:
This is a ‘Speed 2’ level of disaster — with Warner Bros. massively overspending on a sequel, only to see its audience all but abandon the film domestically. Warner Bros. has the biggest hit of the fall season in ‘Beetlejuice 2’ and now likely the largest flop, too, in ‘Joker 2.’ Such is the way of the sequel. The truth is, the creators of ‘Joker 2’ went a direction [that] the majority of audiences didn’t want to follow. Ultimately, choices were made, and unfortunately, they didn’t align with moviegoers’ taste.
Such a critical disaster is too heavy a price to pay for one man’s vanity. And so the failure ofJoker 2has us questioning if Todd Phillips really hates DC or if the film was simply an ill-advised move on the director’s part who invested his creative eccentricities in the wrong movie at the wrong time.
Well, at least, the director got to have his last laugh by doing justice to the sequel’s title since his fantasy of making a musical reflected a classic case of folie à deux reflected in his film’s central characters.
Joker: Folie à Deuxis now playing in theaters.
Diya Majumdar
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2410
Diya Majumdar is a Senior Content Writer at FandomWire with over 2000 published articles on the website. Since 2022, she has been working as an entertainment journalist with a special focus on films and pop culture.Among the countless genres and themes of Hollywood, the ones that particularly favor Diya’s tastes include Game of Thrones, DC, and well-aged thrillers and classics.
