As I’ve noted before, there’s a long history of the trades — THR, Variety, Deadline —being used as studio mouthpieces, with reporting designed for specific, narrative-building purposes. It was most recently used on Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” and is now being used again on another box-office bomb.
There’s an assortment of reasons why Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux” severely underperformed, but in my opinion, the toxic word of mouth did it in, and that really started with Warner Bros deciding to give it a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Warner Bros is now spinning, through Deadline, all of the blame towards Phillips by implying that the studio “appeased” his requests by giving him “final cut” on the film and granting his request for the Venice world premiere. Here’s Antonio D’Allessandro …
The biggest promotional cardinal sin of them all: Launching this sequel which didn’t have the goods at the Venice Film Festival. Why would any studio put a movie out there and let it sit on Rotten Tomatoes for a month with bad reviews? Sources tell me it was all part of Warner Bros. appeasing Phillips, which is why they allowed him to make this auteur-ish Stephen Sondheim-like feature in the first place. Between the ‘Hangover’ franchise and ‘Joker,’ Warner Bros. has reaped $2.5 billion off of Phillips’ fare at the box office. What do you do with a director whose done that much for you? Give him final cut.
Last December, Disney did the same sh*t, right after Nia DaCosta’s “The Marvels” bombed at the box-office.
A Variety report had someone from Disney leaking to the trade that, while “The Marvels” was still in post-production, DaCosta disappeared, deciding to start work on her next film, “Hedda.” This “source” told Variety, “If you’re directing a $250M movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go.”
I’m not saying DaCosta or Phillips should be exempted from blame for the disastrous performance of their respective films, but it’s important to point out the narrative-building that comes in studios attempting damage control and trying to escape any kind of blame, especially with shareholders constantly on their backs and demanding answers.
Back to Phillips, he’s starting to slowly distance himself from this ‘Folie à Deux' debacle by explicitly stating, multiple times, that he’s “done” with DCEU. Don’t expect him to make more movies with Warner Bros either.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.