The first Joker movie was going to end like Folie à Deux, but Christopher Nolan said no

The first Joker movie came out in 2019 and made over a billion dollars at the box office. After a success like that, a sequel was inevitable. Joker: Folie à Deux came out this past weekend, and it has been overwhelmingly rejected by audiences and critics alike. The box office has tanked, the reviews are brutal, and everyone at Warner Bros. Discovery is scrambling to figure out what the hell happened.

The Hollywood Reporter has sniffed around for answers. Some fun things it's uncovered:

• After the success of the first film, director Todd Phillips was given a large amount of creative control on this project. Phillips spent opening weekend "in seclusion" on a ranch he owns. Probably a good call.
• There was no test screening for this film, which is unusual for a movie that costs this much; Folie à Deux cost $200 million to make.
• If you're wondering where in the hell all that money went, one big answer is salaries. Phillips and lead actor Joaquin Phoenix were each paid $20 million for the movie, while newcomer Lady Gaga was paid $12 million. Altogether, that's $52 million. To put that in context, the first Joker movie cost $55 million to make, total.
• DC Films president Walter Hamada worked on the first Joker movie. The DC movie universe was in chaos when Folie à Deux was greenlit, so no one from DC worked on the sequel. James Gunn and Peter Safran were brought in a few months later to manage the newly formed DC Studios, and both have been clear that they had no input on Folie à Deux. According to a source from Variety, Phillips wanted “wanted nothing to do with DC” during the making of the film.
• Joaquin Phoenix got the idea for Folie à Deux in a dream. When asked what audience the movie was intended for, one source said: "For Joaquin."

Beware major SPOILERS for Joker: Folie à Deux below!

The alleged reason there was no test screening for Folie à Deux was because the producers didn't want spoilers to leak. And indeed, there is a big spoilery moment at the end of the movie: Arthur Fleck, also known as the Joker, dies, stabbed to death in prison by an anonymous inmate who then carves a Glasgow smile into his face, meaning he slashes upward from the corners of his own mouth to give the impression of a permanent grin.

You may remember that the version of the Joker from director Christopher Nolan's movie The Dark Knight, played by Heath Ledger, had a Glasgow smile. Per THR, at the end of the original Joker movie, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker was supposed to give himself a Glasgow smile in front of a crown, but Nolan vetoed the idea, arguing that Heath Ledger's Joker was the only version that should have that distinction. But by the time Folie à Deux was getting made, Nolan was no longer working with Warner Bros. (they fell out after the studio released their movies straight to streaming during COVID), so the idea was brought back.

Folie à Deux is floundering for a lot of reasons, but if you had to boil it down, it sounds like giving complete creative control over to Phillips, then over-confident thanks to the success of the first film, was a mistake. He used all that slack to make a movie that, while I think it has some value as an artistic statement, didn't give fans of the first movie, or fans of Batman in general, anything remotely like what they were looking for.

Phillips' Joker movies are kind of separated from the rest of the DC Universe, but this still puts more pressure on next year's Superman movie, directed by James Gunn, to perform well. We'll see how that shakes down in July.

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