'Joker: Folie a Deux' Sets Opening Night On Max
Sure, there’s jingle bells, and while there’s no Batman here, the sequel’s box office sure smells
The clown show is officially coming home for Christmas. Joker: Folie á Deux, returning director Todd Phillips’s vastly underperforming sequel to 2019’s Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga has officially set its Max sentencing date. It will premiere on the streamer next Friday, December 13, and, as is practice, will go linear on HBO on Saturday night, December 14 at 8 PM.
The imminent arrival was first teased at the start of the month, with “coming soon” designations in Max’s “What’s New in December” video and the Hero Mode social brand’s posts on Twitter and Instagram. Now the date is known. It immediately follows (with space) the arrivals of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which happened Friday with a 6:50 PM HBO premiere tomorrow, and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which streams tomorrow with an 8 PM same-day HBO premiere. Opening four weeks after the former and a week before the “wide” release of the latter, it will have taken 71 days to get to Max, three weeks sooner than the former’s 92 days, but the latter took just about two weeks sooner than Folie á Deux with 58 days.
Two years after the events of the first film, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is an inmate in Arkham Asylum, awaiting trial for the murders he committed during the first film. There he meets and strikes up a wild romance with Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn (played by Gaga), and the two plot an escape together. His struggle with his dual identity plays out as much as a jukebox musical as it does a crime drama. The film also stars Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Maryanne Stewart, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Bill Smitrovich, Sharon Washington, Alfred Rubin Thompson, Connor Storrie, Gregg Daniel, Mac Brandt, George Carroll and John Lacy.
The sequel failed to live up to its billion-dollar predecessor, which earned Phoenix the Academy Award for Best Actor, grossing $206 million at the global box office, with only $58 million of it from North America. $38 million of that came from its opening weekend, and was followed by an 81% plunge in its second weekend, falling out of the box office top five after its third. It cost $200 million to produce and was ultimately expected to lose at least $150 million to $200 million from this run.
If the film has any reason to smile, it has its fans in directors John Waters and Quentin Tarantino. “Finally, a love story I can relate to,” Waters writes, ranking the film his sixth favorite in his annual top 10 list on Vulture. “So insane, so well thought out, so well directed, so much smoking! It’s Jailhouse Rock meets Busby Berkeley with a 9/11 That’s Entertainment! ending that will make you shake your head in cinematic astonishment. Stupid critics. Gaga so good. Joker so right. Die, dumbbells, die!”
Tarantino’s praises came during an October interview on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, raving Joaquin Phoenix “gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life.” and calling Phillips himself the Joker. “The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? And then his big surprise gift — haha! — the jack-in-the-box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you — is the comic book geeks. He’s saying fuck you to all of them. He’s saying fuck you to the movie audience. He’s saying fuck you to Hollywood. He’s saying fuck you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers […] And Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker.”
Phillips wrote the script for Folie à Deux with Scott Silver, who serves as an executive producer with Pete Chiappetta, Mark Friedberg, Georgia Kacandes, Andrew Lary, Jason Ruder, Anthony Tittanegro and Michael E. Uslan, who has had the film rights to Batman since 1979. Phillips serve as a producer alongside Joseph Garner and Emma Tillinger Koskoff as well as Justine Conte and David Webb as co-producers.
