Joker 2 Box Office Plunges in Second Weekend, Worst Drop Ever for a Comic Book Movie

Art the Clown is decking the halls with Joker. Cineverse’s Christmas-themed slasher Terrifier 3 took the No. 1 spot at the box office over the weekend, with the chainsaw-wielding killer clown cutting into the legs of Warner Bros.’ Joker: Folie à Deux after one week in theaters. The musical Joker sequel starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga — which waltzed into theaters on Oct. 4 with a $37 million opening weekend, below flops Morbius ($39 million), The Marvels ($46 million) and DC’s own The Flash ($55 million) — plunged to $7 million in its second weekend for an 81 percent drop, the worst ever for any comic book-based movie.

Marvel Studios’ The Marvels, the sequel to the 2019 billion-dollar grosser Captain Marvel, held the record for the worst second-weekend decline ever when it fell 78 percent after its franchise-low opening weekend last November.

Joker 2, which also received the worst grade ever for any comic book movie with a “D” CinemaScore, suffered a steeper second-week decline than 1997’s Steel (78%), 2022’s Morbius (74%), 2023’s The Flash (72%), 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix (71%), 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army (70%), 2010’s Jonah Hex (69%), 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (69%), 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (69%), and 2023’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods (69%).

With a global tally of $165 million so far, Joker 2 is looking to tap out with a domestic total around $57 million. The first Joker — which earned $39.3 million on its first Friday alone in 2019 — danced its way to $335 million at the domestic box office and finished its run with $1.06 billion worldwide, making it the first R-rated movie to cross the milestone and the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever until Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine took the No. 1 spot over the summer.

Terrifier 3 slashed its way to the top spot with an estimated $18.3 million from about 2,500 theaters, while DreamWorks’ animated movie The Wild Robot added another $13.5 million to its $148 million global haul to take the No. 2 spot in its third weekend. Joker 2, in its second weekend, dropped to third place with an estimated $7 million from 4,100 theaters.