Love or hate Joker: Folie à Deux, there's simply no getting around the fact that it's an embarrassing misfire for Warner Bros. Discovery.
A critical and commercial flop, we've now reached a point where fingers are being pointed. In Variety's latest piece, they're aimed squarely at filmmaker Todd Phillips and very much away from DC Studios.
Noting that both James Gunn and Peter Safran were absent from the Joker sequel's premiere, it's said a "dysfunctional dynamic" behind the scenes saw Phillips decide he "wanted nothing to do with DC" during production. That allowed him to make the movie he wanted without anyone bringing up the comics or attempting to intervene.
"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," one insider tells the trade. "People showed up because that guy was Joker."
While a DC spokesperson claims Gunn was busy working on Peacemaker and that Safran had bronchitis during the premiere, Phillips refused to take notes from the duo and would instead only liaise with Warner Bros.' Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.
Gunn and Safran were on hand for the first director’s cut screening for the studio, but it appears their notes were ignored. So was Warner Bros.' for that matter; CEO David Zaslav tried to push Phillips to make the sequel for less money in London, but the filmmaker wouldn't budge on Los Angeles. As a result, the budget ballooned to $200 million before a $100 million marketing spend which takes those costs up to a whopping $300 million. Joker: Folie à Deux needs to earn $450 million to break even.
A Warner Bros. spokesperson denies any friction and claims the studio didn't want to debut the movie at the Venice Film Festival. The trade is adamant Phillips didn't want test screenings and his rejection of the DC fanbase has only served to alienate the fans who paid to see 2019's Joker multiple times in theaters.
"No one could get through to Todd," a source directly involved with the movie tells the trade. "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."
As things stand, Joker: Folie à Deux will be the year's biggest failure. It's not something we ever saw coming, but if Phillips has the attitude detailed here, it's also not remotely surprising.