JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX | WHITE BIRD openings | Superhero genre update | October 4 to 6, 2024 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: October 4 to 6, 2024
1) Joker: Folie à Deux opening
- This is a weak opening for the follow-up sequel in a superhero series. The weekend figure is well below average for an episode #2, with a large drop from the first Joker's start. As a spin-off storyline from Batman, the opening is above average, but again, with a big drop.
Critics' reviews and audience scores are poor (a rare D CinemaScore):
- The Joker’s dark, anti-hero persona was a welcome counterpoint to other superhero characters. The first Joker hit its notes so well, it earned Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor Academy Award and went on to a superb $1.08 billion worldwide, with particularly good numbers overseas.
Where do you go from there? How do you extend a dark, anti-hero story? Most comic book sequels bring in a new bad guy and retell the story, but this is the bad guy. There's very little action or humor to work with.
Lady Gaga in a musical was an unconventional choice. Was there another direction to go in, another conflict to explore that would maintain the story’s energy and originality? We don't think so. Joker was a well-made character study about a dark, sad figure. That story had limited potential to grow, and Folie à Deux is not overcoming it.
- More on superheroes below…
2) White Bird opening
- This is a non-opening for a family drama sequel. It loosely follows Wonder, which starred Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson. That picture opened to a strong $27.5m in November 2017, then held particularly well through the year-end holidays for a 4.8x multiple.
Critics' reviews are good and the audience score is outstanding (an A+ CinemaScore). But with a new and lower-profile cast, a different set of characters, and a period story, there’s very little connection to the first film. The numbers are collapsing:
3) Superhero genre update
- After performing inconsistently during the pandemic, superheroes are a smaller genre now — you can see it below. They remain among the most powerful films in the industry (Deadpool & Wolverine is finishing with over $1.325 billion worldwide), but the days of taking any secondary and tertiary character and giving them their own movie are over.
We expect the genre to finish this year with just below $3 billion in total BO (Marvel’s Venom 3 is three weeks away and tracking very well), and next year should finish with just over $3 billion. Both years have five releases. Clearly, these are smaller numbers than before the pandemic:
- Superhero movies are understood and embraced by all audiences around the world. Even with some setback in China, their international appeal is an enormous asset.
The challenge going forward is launching a new hero and storyline on the level of “the classics.” We don't expect that from Marvel's Kraven the Hunter in December this year. After that, Marvel's Thunderbolts in May 2025 is an important release.
Kraven the Hunter, a character from the Marvel Spider-Man universe, on December 13, 2024
