Posted in: Joker, Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: joker 2, Joker: Folie à Deux, todd phillips

Todd Phillips Doesn't Get Your Joker: Folie À Deux Budget Concerns

Joker: Folie À Deux director Todd Phillips doesn't understand why the general public has concerns about the increased budget compared to the first film.

Now that we're all terminally online, people have become much more invested in film budgets than ever in previous years. Back in the day, the only people who needed to care about the budgets of films were those financing said films, the creatives involved with making the film, and those writing about the film. Now, with so many people on social media interacting with bite-sized news and the fact that many people don't actually understand how movies are made, the general public cares about budgets. They have started to see the correlation that if a film they love has a massive budget that it doesn't make back, they won't see more of it, even if the film was always intended to be a one-off. Joker: Folie À Deux reportedly has a budget of $200 million, which is more than three times the first film's budget of $60 million. It seems that director Todd Phillips doesn't quite understand where people are coming from regarding being concerned about a massive budget, as he explained in an interview with Variety.

"I read these stories, and it seems like they're on the side of the multinational corporations," Phillips says. "They're like, 'Why does it cost so much?' They sound like studio executives. Shouldn't people be happy that we got this money out of them, and we used it to go hire a bunch of crew people who can then feed their families?"

In a perfect world, the everyday person wouldn't care about budgets, and they wouldn't care about box office numbers, but we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where studios constantly put the cart before the horse and release films with a cliffhanger ending that bomb, and there isn't any conclusion to the storylines. It's happening in movies just as much as it is over television, and people are becoming increasingly paranoid about getting invested in something that might not have a definitive ending of any kind. Joker wasn't supposed to have a sequel, so when Joker: Folie À Deux was announced, people had a reason to be concerned that this film could have some sort of cliffhanger ending to lead into a third movie — Hollywood loves trilogies after all.

Phillips has refuted this: "It was fun to play in this sort of sandbox for two movies, but I think we've said what we wanted to say in this world," all but confirming that Joker 3 is not in the cards, so there is a good chance Joker: Folie À Deux has some sort of definitive ending. Even so, people are still hesitant because they have been burned one too many times, and they are paranoid it's going to happen again. That's where the budget concerns from the general public come from, Todd. They are not siding with corporations or people trying to get armchair studio executives; they've just been burned by one too many incomplete stories, and they are hesitating to get invested again.

Joker: Folie À Deux: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

From acclaimed writer/director/producer Todd Phillips comes Joker: Folie À Deux, the much-anticipated follow-up to 2019's Academy Award-winning Joker, which earned more than $1 billion at the global box office and remains the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. The new film stars Joaquin Phoenix once again in his Oscar-winning dual role as Arthur Fleck/Joker opposite Oscar-winner Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born).

Joker: Folie À Deux finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love but also finds the music that's always been inside him.

The film also stars Oscar nominees Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Catherine Keener (Get Out, Capote), alongside Zazie Beetz, reprising her role from Joker. Phillips, who was nominated for Oscars for directing, writing, and producing Joker, directed Joker: Folie À Deux from a screenplay by fellow Oscar nominee Scott Silver & Phillips, based on characters from DC. The film was produced by Phillips, Oscar nominee Emma Tillinger Koskoff and Joseph Garner. Lady Gaga served as music consultant. The film's executive producers are Michael E. Uslan, Georgia Kacandes, Silver, Mark Friedberg, and Jason Ruder.

Warner Bros. Pictures Presents A Joint Effort Production, A Film by Todd Phillips, Joker: Folie À Deux. The film will be released worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, and will be only in theaters nationwide on October 4, 2024, and beginning internationally on 2 October, 2024.

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