Projections bounced all over the scale leading up to the debut of Joker, but now we finally have an official number. Joker took in $93.5 million domestically to beat the old October box office record held by Venom at $80.25 million. Combined with the foreign ticket sales of $140.5 million, the film now stands at a global total of $234 million.
Beyond beating the October opening number, it also marks the largest opening for a Warner Bros. film in two years. Other accolades include the best three-day opening for an R-rated film and the fifth-biggest opening for 2019.
With a reported budget of $55 million, this is a fantastic opening for the film. As with all movies, we’ll need to wait and see what sort of legs it has. Comic book films typically are font loaded and see significant dropoffs after their opening weekends, but this is, of course, not your typical example of the genre.
Will word of mouth power the film to a second successful weekend? Next weekend’s wide releases – defined as any film opening on more than 2,000 screens – includes The Addams Family, Gemini Man, and Jexi. With wildly different genres, they shouldn’t cut significantly into the demographics for Joker.
No matter what happens financially moving forward, the film has done well, and now it’s time to set targets on awards season.
