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Posted in: Joker, Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: Joker: Folie à Deux
Joker: Folie à Deux Reportedly Has A $200M Budget [For Some Reason]
A new report says that the budget of Joker: Folie à Deux has grown to $200 million, more than triple the budget of the first film.
Article Summary
- Joker: Folie à Deux's staggering $200M budget triples original's cost.
- Stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga's salaries inflate budget massively.
- Film takes a gamble as a musical; success at box office uncertain.
- Warner Bros. Discovery's financial strategy raises industry eyebrows.
Warner Bros. Discovery hasn't exactly been everyone's favorite studio these days. Things were already a bit weird when they decided to shelve Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt tax purposes. However, the backlash was pretty significant, and you would think they would have learned from their mistakes and not do that again. "Learning from our mistakes" is what people in movies do, but not those who make them. Coyote vs. Acme was the next film that was shelved, and people were left wondering how a studio that had just released Barbie was that deep in the red. The issue comes down to massive budgets where films must break half a billion to get out of the red. It seems that the long tradition of insane budgets continues as a new report from Variety has revealed that the budget of Joker: Folie à Deux, of all films, has a reported budget of $200 million.
Of all the films that get a budget of $200 million, that is not one that you would expect. The first film had a decent budget of $60 million and made a billion at the box office. However, that was in 2019, and, as we have mentioned many times, that was an abnormal year for the box office. So, hedging your bets that Joker: Folie à Deux will do those numbers is not a good idea. The report indicates that the budgets of stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga set the production back over $30 million alone [$20 million and $12 million, respectively]. The budget for two of the stars in the sequel is more than half the budget of the first movie; that is insanity.
Joker: Folie à Deux is doing something really interesting and taking a risk by making a musical, but there is no way of knowing whether that will work out. When you take wild swings like that, you don't get budgets that massive because should it fail, no one will want to take more risks. Joker: Folie à Deux should have been $100 million at the maximum. The current regime can blame previous leadership all they want, but at the end of the day, losing money is losing money, and if David Zaslav keeps getting the bad press he is getting, no one will want to work with him. In April, Warner Bros. Discovery could be selling or merging yet again. While they might have nice deals with the likes of Margot Robbie, Jordan Peele, Wes Anderson, and Tom Cruise, none of that will matter if the big films of 2024 fall flat on their faces or don't perform well enough to make up for their insane budgets.
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