The failure of Joker: Folie à Deux was quite something. The original movie grossed over $1 billion worldwide and earned Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award for Best Actor. In hindsight, it really should have stopped there, but with that kind of money on the table, you can’t fault Warner Bros. for wanting to cash in again. Unfortunately, the sequel became one of the biggest bombs of 2024. It only managed to gross $207.5 million worldwide and was trashed by critics, not exactly the glorious follow-up the studio had anticipated. Lady Gaga starred alongside Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux, and recently spoke with Rolling Stone about the negative response to the movie.
“I wasn’t, like, unfazed,” she said. “It’s funny, I’m almost nervous to share my reaction. But the truth is, when it first started happening, I started laughing. Because it was just getting so unhinged. When it takes a while for something to dissipate, that can be a little more painful. Only because I put a lot of myself into it.“
Gaga continued, “There was a ton of negativity around Joker. And I think I was feeling artistically rebellious at the time.” She explained that the Joker sequel inspired the dark music video for her song Disease. “I put so much of that energy into that video,” she said. “I was in that place, you know, I was like, ‘I’ll show you who I am, and I’ll show you what this fight is like.’“
The sequel finds Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) awaiting trial for his crimes at Arkham State Hospital, where he develops a romantic relationship with another inmate, Lee (Gaga). As the pair grow closer, they envision themselves in a variety of musical scenarios. It certainly wasn’t the sequel Joker fans wanted. The film also lost the studio an enormous amount of money, as the budget for the sequel had ballooned to $200 million.
Our own Chris Bumbray wasn’t a fan of the sequel, feeling that it only exists because the first movie made a boatload of money. “Perhaps Joker was too big of a hit not to get a sequel, but watching Joker: Folie à Deux, you get the distinct feeling that this was an exercise in style for Phillips rather than a sequel that HAD to be made,” Bumbray wrote. “As it is, though, this Joker sequel spins its wheels and winds up being an often dull courtroom movie livened up by occasional flights of fancy into musical numbers. Those sequences are the best in the film, as without them, this would feel like a wholly unnecessary epilogue to what was originally a pretty powerful film.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here,
