Francis Ford Coppola Praises Todd Phillips as ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Flails: “He’s Always One Step Ahead of the Audience”

That was the message Francis Ford Coppola intended to pass across in a social media post on Saturday. As his new film Megalopolis continues to bomb at the box office, he praised Todd Phillips for making Joker: As you may know, Folie à Deux, and it too is faring poorly.

The sequel of The Joker is no longer showing in theaters worldwide this weekend and it earned far worse by getting a D Cinemascore making it the first ever Hollywood comic book picture to do so. The audience backlash is not too shocking, because the follow-up is a musical, while the original was more of an action movie, so you get this weird fusion that some fanboys probably did not ask for.

According to Coppola, such films have always shocked Philips and have given pleasure. He also suggested that moviegoers may not be ready for a film such as Joker: Folie à Deux. Since the marvelous ‘The Hangover’ he’s been one step ahead of anyone’s expectations of him, always moving in a left field direction. Congratulations to Joker: Folie à Deux,” this is what Coppola wrote on Instagram.

Actually, that’s only a little less bad than the D+ that cinemas assigned to Megalopolis on its launch last weekend. Coppola’s dystopian epic began with a paltry $4 million box office against it is estimated that required $120 million to shoot, culled from its investment in production. Despite, its potential no major studio wanted to have anything to with the movie and therefore, Coppola funded the entire film, part, out of his own pocket. Lionsgate only agreed to come on board at the last moment to distribute the movie which on track to gross less than $1 million this weekend.

Joker: Singers Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga starring Folie a Deux, which is an antihero pic musical, could not have had any trouble of getting developed after Phillips’ Joker generated $1 billion in 280 world markets in 2019 and was nominated for 11 Oscars while Phoenix won best actor. The first Joker was produced for $55 million and before marketing; the second was in a net range of $190-$200 million, increasing the ante by a great deal.

At one point, when Folie à Deux first entered tracking three weeks ago, everyone expected it to debut at around $70 million. Though lesser than the $96 million domestic opening of the first film it was a decent figure. However, as reviews started coming in and once the movie was out for screenings to influential people, activity died down and there was a significant free fall of tracking. Earlier in the week, expectations ranged between $50-60 million for this weekend.

Nevertheless, employing references to Friday’s opening day gross of $20 million it claims that it could auction in the low- to middle $40 million range, with one other rival studio estimating even in the higher $30 market place.

Joing the D CinemaScore club is not the irony that Coppola and Phillips have in common; there is much more to discover.

SG: Coppola said in his Instagram post he’s honored that Joker 2 cinematographer Lawrence Sher has talked about how Coppola’s infamous 1981 musical One From the Heart — a critical, This has recently been analyzed by critics and turned into a cult movie of some sort.

Critics have not been very generous to Megalopolis and Joker 2 that stand at 46 percent and 33 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.