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2024 has been the year of successful sequels.
In fact, the year’s top 11 earners are all sequels. Inside Out 2 holds the top spot, with $1.7 billion in worldwide earnings. Deadpool & Wolverine (aka “Deadpool 3”) took home $1.3 billion. And Despicable Me 4 only narrowly missed the billion-dollar mark with $958 million.
Unfortunately for the folks over at Warner Bros., not every sequel can make audiences smile.
In 2019, Joker broke box office records, earning $1 billion worldwide against a $55 million budget. It remained the top-grossing R-rated film of all time until Deadpool & Wolverine dethroned it this summer.
This weekend, Joker: Folie à Deux only earned an estimated $40 million in domestic theaters—that’s nearly half what it was originally projected to make. Overseas audiences were a bit kinder to the Joker sequel, spending roughly $81.1 million, bringing Joker 2 up to a $121.1 million opening weekend. But considering the film is working against a $190 million budget this time around, it seems the Joker did not have the last laugh.
The Wild Robot and Transformers One proved that kids’ movies about robots have some staying power, though. The Wild Robot (released the previous weekend) took home an estimated $18.7 million domestically to land in second place. And Transformers One (now in its third week) earned roughly $5.4 million to land in fourth.
If you say Beetlejuice’s name three times, bad things will follow. But that number isn’t necessarily bad luck for his creators. Third place went to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. It brought home approximately $10.3 million, bringing its global tally to $402 million. This makes it the eighth top earner this year as well as proving that that not sequels are flops.
Horror-thriller Speak No Evil closed out the weekend’s top five with $2.8 million in estimated earnings, unsurprising given October’s penchant for scary flicks.
Other weekend newcomers included White Bird (a pseudo-sequel to 2017’s Wonder) with approximately $1.5 million in domestic earnings; Monster Summer (Mel Gibson’s latest film) with about $622,000; and The Outrun (a drama starring Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan that tackles the difficulties of alcoholism) with roughly $334,000.
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