Box office Joker: Folie à Deux grossed $58.3million in the United States and Canada, and $149.2million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $207.5million. In April 2025,
Deadline Hollywood calculated the film lost the studio $144.25 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues. Five weeks ahead of release,
Boxoffice Pro projected that the film would "easily" gross at least $100million in its opening weekend in the United States and Canada and outgross its predecessor's debut of $96.2million, with estimates at $115–145million despite it receiving mixed reviews at Venice like its predecessor. Two weeks after, projections dropped to $70million, and the week of release, estimates became $55–60million. Several outlets compared the film's opening weekend gross to that of other recent high-profile box office bombs
The Marvels (2023) and
Madame Web (2024), noting that
Folie à Deuxs own debut made less than either.
Deadline Hollywood attributed the opening to fans of the original not wanting to see a musical. Jeff Goldstein, the studio's president of domestic distribution, acknowledged the film's performance in an article in
The Wall Street Journal, mentioning that the sequel was a "deeper dive into mental illness" and making guesses about some of the film's core audience (particularly males) struggling to connect with this new direction for the character of Lee.
Wall Street financial analyst Dan Ives deemed the film a "
black eye" for Warner Bros. at a key time, with the industry having expected the film to be a hit.
Variety also attributed the film's underperformance to
Bradley Cooper's lack of participation on it with his commercial instincts unlike its predecessor, as Cooper dissolved his producing partnership with Phillips in 2021.'' The film's second weekend gross fell below the debut of
Terrifier 3 (2024), an independent horror movie, which topped the box office in its opening weekend at number one. The following weekend the film lost 1,245 theaters and made $2.2 million, dropping another 69% and finishing in sixth. A source close to the production deemed the release a "complete audience rejection". Another described it as "a very expensive art film" whose intended audience was Phoenix. According to another source, Phillips spent the weekend release of
Folie à Deux secluded on a ranch property he owns. while those surveyed by
PostTrak gave the film a 40% overall positive score—an average rating of out of 5 stars—with "a very low" 24% saying they would definitely recommend it. William Bibbiani of
TheWrap gave the film a positive review, writing that it was "the most interesting film about Arthur Fleck. It's genuinely a little daring, genuinely a little challenging, and genuinely a little genuine". Geoffrey Macnab of
The Independent described the film as "deeply unsettling". In his four stars out of five review for
The Daily Telegraph,
Robbie Collin lauded the film for its musical numbers and Phillips for "stay[ing] true to the project's nihilistic ethos," while noting Gaga was "magnetic but underused". Rafa Sales Ross of
The Playlist echoed similar thoughts on the use of Gaga but enjoyed Phoenix "in a much more contained turn, a welcome change to those put off by the constant, annoyingly loud cackling that permeated much of the previous installment". In a retrospective review, David Caballero of
Collider lauded Storrie's performance in the film, calling him possibly the film's "one redeeming grace": "In
Folie à Deux, Storrie proves he can do it, stealing the movie from its Oscar-winning star with fewer than five minutes of screentime."
Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian gave
Folie à Deux three out of five. He praised the opening, the supporting cast and the "real spark" in the first encounter between the two protagonists, but wrote that "the whole movie finally turns out to be oppressively, claustrophobically and repetitively becalmed in that oddly unreal Gotham-universe jail with Phoenix and Gaga kept apart for long periods". Bradshaw found that "Phoenix's own performance is as single-note as before, though certainly as forceful and his screen presence is potent" and that Gaga "brings a sly and manipulative malice" to her character. In a mixed review for
KQED-FM, Jack Coyle wrote: "Laudable as the intentions of
Folie à Deux may be, it feels thoughtfully but tiresomely stuck in the past". In a negative review for
ABC News, Luke Goodsell wrote: "That
Joker was intended as a standalone movie is evident from the new sequel ... a quasi-musical
courtroom drama that has little interest in advancing any kind of story. In fact, it's even more deliberately obtuse and anti-crowd-pleasing than its predecessor".
USA Today reported that the negative reviews "argued the musical numbers are underwhelming and Gaga's talents are not well-utilized".
Manohla Dargis of
The New York Times stated the film was "such a dour, unpleasant slog that it is hard to know why it was made or for whom," and that "Phoenix's sour frown, the movie's barely-there story, its unrelenting grimness and its commitment to forced eccentricity suggest that no one involved was really stoked to make it". David Ehrlich of
IndieWire gave a scathing review, stating the film "perversely denies audiences everything they've been conditioned to want from it; gently at first, and then later with the unmistakable hostility of a knife to the gut," and that "its turgid symphony of unexpected cameos, mournful cello solos, and implied sexual violence is too dissonant to appreciate even on its own terms". Spencer Kornhaber of
The Atlantic lamented that the film has "nothing interesting to say about the challenge of fame [and feels like] punish[ment] for the crime of wanting to be entertained". Justin Clark of
Slant Magazine gave the film one out of four, writing that "
Folie à Deuxs attempt at showcasing cleverness, verve, or engagement is held cruelly underwater by staid direction, shoddy emotional plotting, a gleeful sense of cruelty, and a grave
nihilism that makes
Zack Snyder's work seem like a season of
Bluey".
Kyle Smith of
The Wall Street Journal said, "The falloff in quality from
Joker, a genuinely searing innovation in comic-book movies, to this one is so steep that it's comparable to the dropoff between
The Hangover (2009) and
The Hangover Part II (2011)". David Rooney of
The Hollywood Reporter found the film "frustrating" and its plot "a little thin and at times dull", and disliked how the film "all but neutralizes [the Joker]" and "reduces the archvillain to a hollowed-out product of childhood trauma and mental illness".
Owen Gleiberman of
Variety also criticized its plot, deeming it "overly cautious" and lacking in execution. He found Gaga, with her "lovely unforced presence", was "drastically underused ... Her Lee never quite takes wing".
Themes and analysis Critics noted that the film was a work of
metafiction designed to intentionally antagonize audiences who were fans of the first film. Rather than capitulating to the expectations of the predecessor's fanbase that Arthur would fully embrace his Joker persona and go on to become Batman's archenemy, the film serves to rebuke those who idolized the character of the Joker. As a deliberate anti-audience effort, the film pushes against the notion of
fan service, instead creating a self-aware narrative that is a commentary on its own existence. The film features off-key musical sequences that contrast with fan expectations following the original film; during one such scene, Joker acknowledges, "I don't think we're giving the people what they want". By the end of the film, Arthur is pleading with Lee to stop singing, a sentiment expected to be shared by the audience. Lee Quinzel can be viewed as a stand-in for audiences who were fans of the first film, with her comments about becoming obsessed with Joker after having seen a TV movie based on his life. The finale where Arthur's crimes are trialed and he is made to seem sad and pathetic represents an effort by Phillips to subvert and undermine audiences who had seen Arthur as heroic in the first film, Likewise, Arthur renouncing his Joker persona before being unceremoniously killed by a younger inmate, implied to be the Joker whom Bruce Wayne will go on to fight as Batman, has been interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the filmmakers to disappoint audiences, subversively denying fans their desire for a heroic or sympathetic narrative. Ultimately, the metafiction reflects Arthur's characterization; just as his society only cares for him for what he represents as Joker and rejects him when he renounces that persona, so does the audience reject Arthur. As a result, many said the film is a "very expensive
punch line" for the same audiences who saw the first film, Director
Quentin Tarantino, a fan of the film, noted its indebtedness to his own screenplay for
Natural Born Killers (1994). In an interview with
Bret Easton Ellis he said that "As the guy who created Mickey and Mallory, I loved what they did with it. I loved the direction he took. The whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox". He also sees similarities to the film
Peter Ibbetson (1935), based on the
George du Maurier novel of the same name. He said, "It follows its storyline pretty almost exactly".
Accolades ==Notes==