Joker — better known as Joaquin Phoenix’s follow-up to last year’s semi-comic Western The Sisters Brothers — has been breaking box office record after box office record, which isn’t bad for a picture some worried may inspire violence at screenings. So here’s another: According to the math cooked up by Forbes, the stand-alone spin-off about Batman’s most popular baddie is now the most profitable comic book movie ever made.
Just a reminder, profitable isn’t the same as raking in the most money, though Joker was able to surpass Deadpool, another renegade comic book movie, to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, at least if you look at global sales. As of this writing, Joker’s worldwide gross is $952 million — dangerously close to the billion mark, which it may pass by the time some of you read this. Thing is, its production budget was a relatively skimpy $62.5 million. And that means it’s made over 15 times its budget.
Again, this is if you look at Joker’s comparatively modest budget. Most comic book movies, of course, cost considerably more than $62.5 million. Avengers: Endgame cost a whopping $356 million, and since it grossed $2.79 billion, that means it “only” made about 7 ½ times its budget. (By the way, all of this is only looking at the production budget. There’s also advertising budgets, which aren’t cheap.)
Anyway, it appears yet another congrats are in order to the gritty little movie based upon a deathless IP centered around the most popular current genre in the cinema that could!
(Via Forbes)
