Joker Presales Outpacing Venom's Record Opening, According to Fandango

Aside from all the controversy surrounding the Joker movie, there's been a looming question about whether the DC's villain origin story can best the October opening record set by Sony's Venom last year. Now that Joker's opening day has arrived, it's time to start tallying up the box office receipts. However, as Fandango's early tracking clearly indicates, it's looking like Joker stands a very good chance of taking the crown. Joker is currently outpacing big October movies (Venom, Halloween), as well as outpacing previous DC releases Wonder Woman, Shazam, and Aquaman. Not a bad start to Joker's theatrical run!

Here are the exact details, a provided by Fandango:

"JOKER" SET TO BE FANDANGO'S BIGGEST OCTOBER PRESELLER, OUTPACING "VENOM" AND "HALLOWEEN" IN ADVANCE TICKET SALES

Hi-res graphic for this week's Fanticipation are available to download here.

LOS ANGELES (October 3, 2019) – Opening tomorrow, "Joker" is shaping up to be Fandango's biggest October preseller of all time, outpacing the previous October presales champs "Venom" and "Halloween" in Fandango's advance ticket sales. "Joker" is also outselling "Shazam!," "Aquaman" and "Wonder Woman" at the same point in the Fandango sales cycle.

...According to a Fandango survey of over 1,000 moviegoers planning to see "Joker":
93% can't wait to see Joaquin Phoenix in the title role.
· 86% are looking forward to an R-rated, grittier DC movie.
83% are excited to see more DC origin stories."

While hearing that Joker is outpacing some of its blockbuster DC movie predecessors is surprising, the more surprising part is the audience survey that follows. The massive intrigue in Joaquin Phoenix's performance is pretty obvious, based on reviews, but the high interest in "grittier" DC movies is surprising, as "dark" and "gritty" became very tainted words for the brand, following Zack Snyder's run of films (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Justice League). Films like Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam were supposed to be the welcome antithesis to Snyder's DC movies - so imagine the surprise that audience want that dark, gritty, tone back.

Finally, the mention of high interest in a DC origin story is also very telling. It says that at this point - after all the many hiccups in DC's attempt to build a shared universe like Marvel's - fans are ready to get back to basics, i.e., just getting one, good, DC character story up on the big screen.

Upcoming DC movies include Joker on October 4th, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on February 7, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5, 2020, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.