JOKER Has Officially Crossed The $1 Billion Mark At The Box Office

We all knew it would happen, and now it’s happened. Over the weekend, director Todd Phillips’ Joker officially crossed the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office.

Joker is now the first R-rated film ever to achieve this milestone and it did it without being releases in China. This is a big and impressive feat! It’s so funny to me that the studio actually thought this movie was going to be a big flop.

I love that this film defied all expectations! It just proves that lower budgeted films that tell good stories and have strong character development can still reign supreme in Hollywood.

The big question is, will Todd Phillips actually end up making a sequel? There’s no doubt that the studio wants one and Joaquin Phoenix has also expressed his desire for a sequel. He explained:

“Long before the release or before we had any idea if it would be successful, we talked about sequels. In the second or third week of shooting, I was like, ‘Todd, can you start working on a sequel? There’s way too much to explore.’ It was kind of in jest — but not really.”

Phoenix then went on to reveal that he teamed up with the on-set photographer of Joker to shoot him in character so they could create fake sequel posters to help convince Phillips that Joker could conceivably be inserted into several different types of films like Rosemary’s Baby, Raging Bull, and Yentl.

While Phillips initially only wanted to make one Joker movie, he revealed that he’s actually open to the idea of coming back for a sequel as long as it has “thematic resonance":

“It couldn’t just be this wild and crazy movie about the ‘Clown Prince of Crime’. It would have to have some thematic resonance in a similar way that this does. Because I think that’s ultimately why the movie connected, it’s what’s going on underneath. So many movies are about the spark, and this is about the powder. If you could capture that again in a real way, that would be interesting.”

Are you happy to see that Joker has made over a billion dollars? Do you think Phillips should make a sequel?