“Joker: Folie à Deux” - a Marketing Flop Not a Theatrical Flop

Now that the “Joker” sequel with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga is out on streaming, I finally got a chance to watch it. I saw the original and loved it, although I’m not typically a fan of this genre. But the storytelling and the acting was off the charts, and hence so were the box office proceeds. So of course, the sequel was approached with the same approach to try to garner the same kinds of proceeds.

When “Joker: Folie a Deux” first came out, all we all heard is that it was such a theatrical flop. Bust. Many many a reviewer and many many a viewer said in their own words, “how could the studio spend that much money on a sequel with such a horrible storyline and how could these actors have done such a horrible job?!?”

Horrible.

With such power behind it all, I wanted to see for myself, again even though I’m not typically a fan of this genre. Marvel isn’t usually for me, but I still wanted to know.

Guess what?!? I actually LOVED the movie, and at about ten minutes into it I had a huge revelation … this isn’t a theatrical flop at all, it is a marketing flop.

This is not a sequel at all. It’s an original and it’s not at all in the Marvel formula.

And it never should have been a Marvel mega release. It should never have been treated with the same big budget production as a typical Marvel studio movie with the same expectations as a Marvel sequel to a Marvel blockbuster hit.

This is a stand-alone art film. Art.

It’s an entirely different story about mental health. It didn’t need a big budget. The acting and the story telling is other-worldly. It’s actually a mind-bending study about mental health. The actors take us on a journey about mental health. A journey.

But as potential theater-goers, we were never told that in the marketing of the film, so the expectations going into the theater were way off. Way off!

Fans of Marvel went into the theater having been marketed to in the wrong way. They were set up to see a sequel to “The Joker” that was an entirely different film in the usual Marvel kind of way so when they saw this art film they didn’t like it. It wasn’t what they paid for or signed up for.

That’s not the film’s fault. Or the actor’s fault. It’s the fault of marketing. Wrong positioning. Wrong targeting. Wrong messaging.

Had the marketers gotten that part right, the studio may have been looking at Academy Award nominations for the two leads, for screen writing, for directing … the whole lot. And the proceeds at the box office would have matched art film expectations. And everyone would have been happy, with the exact same film.

This was a marketing flop, not a theatrical flop.

Now, go watch it with the right set of “positioning” expectations.

And then tell me, “what’s your experience?” JIM