Joker Sequel's 'Disappointing' Box Office Addressed by Warner Bros. CEO: We 'Must Deliver More Consistency'

The CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery is reflecting on the lackluster box office served up by Joker: Folie à Deux.

Released last month in theaters, the sequel to 2019's Joker made $204.7 million globally, against a reported $200 million budget (though director Todd Phillips has called the latter budget claim "absurd").

“Even in an industry of hits and misses, we must acknowledge that our studios business must deliver more consistency,” CEO David Zaslav said on an analyst call Thursday, Nov. 7, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"Inconsistency also remains an issue at our motion picture studio, as reinforced recently by the disappointing results of Joker 2," he also said, per Variety.

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Additionally, Zaslav noted "there have been some real bright spots in our studios business." Some of these include September's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which raked in close to $450 million, and the biggest movie of 2023, Barbie.

Despite some misses, "our TV studio is on track to have its most profitable year in scripted content in the last five years," Zaslav also said, per THR.

Folie à Deux earned a D CinemaScore upon its opening. According to Variety, that's the lowest-ever score for a comic-book movie. The most recent record-holder before that was 2015's Fantastic Four, which scored a C-.

By comparison, the original Joker, which won star Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award for Best Actor, got a B+ on CinemaScore. Other critically panned films from this year fared slightly better than Folie à Deux: Borderlands got a D+, while Madame Web got a C+.

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In the sequel, Phoenix's Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. Joker, is facing the death penalty for his crimes in the first film. At Arkham State Hospital, where he’s incarcerated, he “not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him,” per a synopsis.

Lady Gaga stars as that true love: a singing-and-dancing Harleen "Lee" Quinzel, a.k.a. Harley Quinn.

In an early audience screening, as reported by /Film, Phillips, 53, said Folie à Deux would "leave you with a very unsettling [feeling].”

Presumably addressing both movies’ connection to Batman, he added that the sequel's ending "clarifies a lot of things that you might have had questions about in the first movie," and also reportedly joked, “If you don't understand it, email me.”

Joker: Folie à Deux is now available on digital.