Joker Has Biggest Second-Weekend Drop of Any Comic Book Movie in History, and Among the Biggest Drops of Any Movie; Falls to Third Place

The final insult.

Taking the number one spot is a sequel to a killer clown movie that cost, and this is not a typo, $2 million to make.

Huh -- I guess if you make a sequel about an established killer clown that delivers what the audience is expecting and keep the budget under control you can make a fortune.

Who knew.

Terrifier 3 isn't clowning around. The slasher pic is easily winning a weekend of curiosity and carnage at the domestic box office, where Joker: Folie a Deux is suffering the worst decline in history for a comic book movie and one of the biggest among any film.

Cineverse and Icon Events' Terrifier threequel opened ahead of expectations for Chris McGurk's new venture with an estimated $18.2 million from 1,988 theaters.

The next closest film is The Wild Robot, which continues to shine for DreamWorks Animation and Universal. Now in its third weekend, the family pic is on course to earn another $13.4 million from 3,854 cinemas for a domestic cume of $83.7 million. It also pulled in another $24 million overseas for a global haul of $148.5 million.

Todd Phillips' Joker sequel is falling off a cliff in its second weekend with an estimate just north of $7 million from 4,102 theaters, a historic decline of 81 percent. Until now, The Marvels held the record among comic book movies for the worst second-weekend decline at 78 percent. Joker 2′s fall is also nearly the worst drop in history for a film opening in more than 2,000 locations.

Rival studios show Joker 2 coming in closer to $6.7 million to $6.8 million, meaning it will come in fourth behind fellow Warners holdover Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which continues to flex its theatrical muscles even though it's now available in the home on premium VOD. The Tim Burton-directed sequel is estimated to gross $7.050 million from 2,408 locations as it crosses the $275 million mark domestically in its sixth weekend (Warners has Joker at $7.055 million for the weekend domestically).

Overseas, Folie a Deux also fell off steeply, earning $22.7 million from 77 markets for a foreign total of $113.7 million and $165.3 million globally.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, conversely, is a huge win for the studio, and has zoomed past the $400 million mark globally to finish Sunday with $420.3 million in ticket sales. Its foreign tally is $144.7 million.

While Terrifier 3 did decent business, a slew of other new nationwide openers -- including high-profile awards contenders -- struggled to find an audience.

Briarcliff's Donald Trump movie The Apprentice -- which Trump tried to block from ever appearing in cinemas -- opened to an estimated $1.6 million range from 1,740 locations, just enough to crack the top 10. There's always a chance it could switch places with holdover Speak No Evil, which earned just north of $1.5 million (the final order will be determined Monday). Pre-release tracking showed the anti-Trump pic opening in the $3 million range.

Actually, Joker may have fallen to fourth. Both Joker and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (which as been out for like six or seven weeks) brought in $7.1 million, and Warner Bros. insists it made just a little more than Bettlejuice. But Warner Bros. also lied last weekend when they claimed it made $40 million+; in fact, it made $37.7 million. It's possible that they're still lying to avoid that fourth place finish.

Lucas and Spielberg predicted the era of the flopbuster was coming over ten years ago.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have predicted a Hollywood "implosion" that could change the shape of the film industry forever and lead to dramatically hiked ticket prices for blockbuster films.

Speaking at the opening of a new media centre at the University of Southern California, the two Hollywood titans painted a picture of a future in which the failure of half a dozen $250m movies in quick succession caused a seismic shift in studio dynamics, leading to audiences being asked to pay $25 (£15) a ticket for films such as Iron Man 3 but just $7 (£4.50) for movies such as Spielberg's own Lincoln.

Spielberg told students at USC they were vying to enter the film industry at a time when even established film-makers were struggling to get their projects into cinemas, and revealed that the Oscar-winning Lincoln came "this close" to being premiered on the US pay-TV network HBO. He said that many talented young directors were now considered "too fringey" for a cinematic release. "That's the big danger, and there's eventually going to be an implosion -- or a big meltdown," Spielberg said. "There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that's going to change the paradigm."

"I think eventually the Lincolns will go away and they're going to be on television," Lucas added. "As mine almost was," Spielberg interjected. "This close -- ask HBO -- this close."

"The pathway to get into theatres is really getting smaller and smaller," said Star Wars creator Lucas, pointing out that his own passion project, the war drama Red Tails, barely scraped into cinemas last year. "We're talking Lincoln and Red Tails -- we barely got them into theatres," he said. "You're talking about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas can't get their movie into a theatre!"

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:00 PM

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