Full coverage of Warner Bros’ CinemaCon 2024 panel can be found in CinemaBlend’s live blog.
It’s been five years since Todd Philips was at CinemaCon, five years since Joker originally hit theaters in 2019. In that time the theater industry has gone through a pandemic, and the additional whammy of dealing with the aftermath of the double strike last summer. Philips know this has impacted distributors as the 2024 movie release schedule fleshes out, and he came to the Warner Bros. panel to show his appreciation for theaters, particularly after they showed support for the original movie, allowing him to make the upcoming DC movie Folie à Deux. In fact, he opened up about how it was the theaters who once defended him from some trouble that arose just before his last movie about Arthur Fleck was released.
If you were following the trajectory of Joker before it hit theaters, you may remember there was a lot of chatter before the movie hit theaters. There was preemptive backlash to the r-rated DC movie, particularly after a family member of an Aurora shooting victim penned a letter about the movie just a few years after a gunman had open fired during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.
Todd Philips was candid at the time that he hoped not everyone would love Joker, but stuck to his guns that people could “handle the message” of the movie, and even Joker's ending. Theaters, too, stuck with the film and kept it heavily in rotation, and Philips returned to CinemaCon 2024 to thank them for being there for his movie that grew and grew and grew.
The year after Joker had come out, I didn’t have a movie to talk about, but I did want to say thank you to you guys, because I don't know if you remember but a month before the movie came out the narrative turned, and there started to be some bizarre warnings on the movie. But the exhibitors didn’t budge…. that attitude led Joker to do big business.
Philips noted he’d wanted to share the message in 2020, which hadn’t worked out for pandemic-related reasons, but it’s clear ahead of Joker: Folie á Deux's release that he hasn’t forgotten that particular kindness.
Of course, it was a good move from a business standpoint, too. What ended up happening is that the critics of the film amped up word of mouth considerably. The R-rated film went on to make over a $1 billion at the box office, at the time becoming the fourth-highest grossing DC film. (It has since bumped into fifth place thanks to The Batman.)
Of course, I can’t argue with the sentiment of some of the naysayers. Joker is after all, one of the best movies to watch if you want to ruin your day. And given what we’ve now seen in the Joker: Folie á Deux trailer, doubtless its sequel will be a doozy too. We won’t have too long to wait. It's out on October 4th.
