Joker: Folie ร Deux failed drastically to capture an audience during its opening weekend, would it surprise you to know that test screenings were not part of its process? Guess what, no screenings happened until the Venice Film Festival.
A Collider report explains why the Joker sequel film’s decision to skip test screenings failed so badly. Test screenings can help films a lot with tweaking things to make it best suit the audience and their expectations, Mission: Impossible movies, for example, can be screened nearly 100 times. You’d think a sequel to the acclaimed R-rated Joker would take full advantage of that, but instead it skipped test screeners and went straight to film festivals.
In large part, this because the film is vastly different than other comic book adaptations, shoving in music numbers for seemingly no reason besides starring actor, Joaquin Phoenix, wanting it to. The end result was a film that was very divisive among the masses, especially as not everyone was expecting it to be a musical.
Starring Pheonix and Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie ร Deux sees Joker/Arthur Fleck awaiting trial for his crimes and finds true love and the “music that’s always been inside him.”
It’s the new lowest CinemaScore within the comic book adaptation market, falling into a D, which is lower than critically panned 2015’s Fantastic Four, which saw a C-.
