That’s another one in the record books forJoker. The movie has had one heck of a run at the box office since it opened in theaters earlier this month. A far better take than anyone truly expected. To that point, Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince of Crime now stands above Ryan Reynolds as the Merc With a Mouth, asJokerhas officially passedDeadpool 2at the box office, making it the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history.
As of this writing,Jokerhas earned $258.6 million domestically and $526.9 million overseas (and counting). That gives it a current grand total of $785.5 million. That puts it narrowly above last year’sDeadpool 2, which made $785 million. That, itself, was narrowly above the firstDeadpool, which earned a record-breaking $782.6 million in 2016. Which, in part, gave other studios the confidence to green light R-rated comic book movies and other big blockbusters. In a way, different as the movies may be, there is probably noJokerwithoutDeadpool.
It’s also important to point out that a relatively large chunk ofDeadpool 2’s gross came from the PG-13, holiday-themed re-release,Once Upon a Deadpool. The re-edited version of the flick brought in just $6 million in North America, but did pretty well overseas, bringing in another $44 million. So, if one wants to look at this in terms of pure, R-rated gross,Deadpool 2made $735 million in its original form, which would still makeDeadpoolthe previous, highest-grossing R-rated release. Either way,Jokertakes the cake no matter how one wants to slice it.
Jokerhas now set a new standard for what success means within the DC universe. Other movies such asAquaman($1.15 billion) andWonder Woman($821 million) have grossed more in terms of cold, hardbox officedollars. But since Warner Bros. didn’t have quite as much faith in director Todd Phillips' vision, they gave the movie a much smaller budget, reportedly in the $55 million range. That also meant a smaller marketing spend. Taking all of that into account,Jokeris expected to turn nearly $500 million in profit, which is in the same ballpark as Marvel’sAvengers: Endgame, which grossed $2.79 billion at the box office and now stands as the highest-grossing movie in history.
Love it or hate it (and the movie has proved to bedivisive amongst critics, certainly), this experiment proved to be a colossal success. Even if a sequel doesn’t happen, and Todd Phillips has said this was always envisioned as a standalone (but we’ll see about that),Jokerwill undoubtedly pave the way for more out-of-the-box comic book flicks down the line. Be it in the DC universe, or elsewhere. Especially if it does go on to add a little Oscar gold to its growing list of accomplishments. This news was previously reported byForbes.
