‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ actor says people on set predicted it was going to bomb
Comedian Tim Dillon, who had a brief role in Joker: Folie à Deux, has revealed actors on set had already been predicting that the film would flop.
Following its release to largely negative reviews, it became the first Hollywood comic book movie adaptation to have earned a ‘D’ score, and drew an estimated domestic box office opening of $40million (£30.5million) on its opening weekend.
That was roughly half of the equivalent take of its predecessor – well short of its original projections of $70million, which Warner Bros. were reportedly “stunned and sorely disappointed” by.
During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Dillon, who played an an Arkham Asylum security guard, said many actors on set predicted as much, saying it was “the worst film ever made.”
“I think what happened, after the first ‘Joker,’ there was a lot of talk like, ‘Oh, this was loved by incels. This was loved by the wrong kinds of people,” he said. “This sent the wrong kind of message. Male rage! Nihilism!’ All these think pieces. And then I think, ‘What if we went the other way,’ and now they have Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga tap dancing to a point where it’s insane.”
Director Todd Phillips‘s decision to embrace musical theatre elements was hailed by Gaga as “a very big swing”, while she also praised the film’s “audacity and complexity”.
“It has no plot,” Dillon continued. “We would sit there, me and these other guys were all dressed in these security outfits because we’re working at the Arkham Asylum, and I would turn to one of them and we’d hear this crap and I’d go, ‘What the fuck is this?’
“And they’d go, ‘This is going to bomb, man.’ I go, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.’ We were talking about it at lunch, and we’d go, ‘What is the plot? Is there a plot? I don’t know, I think he falls in love with her in the prison?’ It’s not even hate-watchable. That’s how terrible it is.”
Dillon went on speculate the sequel was a $200million “practical joke” that subverted everything fans lauded about the first film, which NME nodded to in a four-star review of the film.
“Despite repeating the line “give the audience what they want” several times,” the review noted, “the film does the exact opposite, at least as far as certain Bat-obsessed members of the fanbase who just want to see more of the same will be concerned – at certain points this feels like blatant teasing, and it’s bound to provoke a reaction.”
Director Quentin Tarantino recently praised this divisive tact, saying it was Todd Phillips’ way of saying “fuck you” to Hollywood: “Todd Phillips is the Joker. The Joker directed the movie. The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right?”
In recent weeks, Phoenix claimed in the podcast Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin that he was once approached by Christopher Nolan to play the Joker in 2008 film The Dark Knight.
“I remember I talked to Chris Nolan about The Dark Knight and that didn’t happen for whatever reason,” he said.
“I wasn’t ready then. That’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘What is in me that’s not doing this?’ And it’s not about me. There’s something else. There’s another person who is going to do something. … I can’t imagine what it would be if we didn’t have Heath Ledger’s performance in that film, right?”
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Poppy Burton
NME
