JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX Was 2024’s Biggest Box Office Flop

The first Joker cost a modest (by comic book movie standards) $65 million to produce. It not only made a billion dollars at the global box office, but it also garnered an Oscar win for Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character. At first, a sequel didn’t really seem to be in order from a storytelling perspective. But when your movie makes that much money, you make a part two. So where did everything go so wrong for director Todd Phillips’s second Joker film? Especially when it had the added bonus of pop star Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn? 

For starters, the budget for the sequel went from $65 million to $200 million. And it’s not like the second part took the Joker and Harley into space. Phillips confined everything to courtrooms and prison cells. In fact, a good chunk of this sequel is courtroom proceedings litigating the events of the previous film. Even if it hit, it would have been tough to make money. Add to that, the musical aspect of the film was instantly offputting to the “bro” demographic, a key part of the first film’s success. Then, the final cherry on top. The movie ends with the reveal that Arthur Fleck isn’t the “real” Joker at all, and he is killed by another inmate. All of these things combined led to a notorious flop.

The film earned a D CinemaScore, and critics largely dismissed it as well. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The original The Exorcist was a global box office phenomenon, garnering several Oscar nominations too. But its sequel four years later, The Heretic, was a massive flop. Sometimes a megahit movie is lightning in a bottle, and just can’t be replicated. Such was the case for the second Joker installment. Eventually, a new Crown Prince of Crime will emerge on the big screen. But Warner Bros will likely want to wait a bit longer, at least until the stink of this most recent version dissipates.

The rest of the top five biggest bombs of 2025 include three other geek-friendly movies (one of which was quite good) and one self-funded vanity project from a film legend. Furiosa lost a reported $119.6 million; Borderlands lost $80 million; Megalopolis lost Francis Ford Coppola $75.5 million (ouch); and Kraven lost a reported $71 million.