Maybe, as the first “Joker” movie stated so eloquently, we really are all clowns. Despite feeling like one of the most inevitable sequels in recent comic book history, “Joker: Folie à Deux” pleased pretty much nobody and went on to become one of the most disappointing critical and financial flops of 2024. The French-flavored title was weird and off-putting, director Todd Phillips’ choice to turn a gritty crime thriller into a jukebox musical left general audiences (“normies,” as we affectionately call them) scratching their heads, and even the ingenious casting of Lady Gaga as fan-favorite antihero Harley Quinn Lee Quinzel failed to pay off when she received a baffling lack of screen time. Basically, very little of this misbegotten movie actually worked — and with a real-life villain like Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav running the show, it was only a matter of time before heads began to roll.
That’s exactly what happened soon after the opening-weekend underperformance of “Joker: Folie à Deux,” according to new details reported by Bloomberg. An irate Zaslav apparently met behind closed doors with Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group Co-Chairs and CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, two extremely well-respected professionals in the industry, and essentially read them the riot act for the misfiring blockbuster and for the exorbitant budgets earmarked for several Warner Bros. movies currently in the production pipeline. (When reached for comment by Bloomberg, for whatever it’s worth, a WB representative was quoted as saying that the meeting was simply “a straightforward ‘Joker 2’ postmortem and a constructive conversation on the slate.”)
In and of itself, studio bosses holding film executives responsible for high-profile bombs is nothing new … or even all that unusual. In this case, however, the context surrounding of this situation makes it particularly notable. Here’s why this could spell trouble for Warner Bros.’ entire movie slate in 2025 and beyond.
Joker 2 is a symptom of a larger problem at Warner Bros.
In a vacuum, an increasingly gun-shy studio like Warner Bros. greenlighting big-budget passion projects from directors with unique creative visions is certainly commendable; but, in reality, the handling of “Joker: Folie à Deux” and several other WB movies to come raises quite a few questions. For one thing, it’s worth noting that David Zaslav is probably the worst possible messenger for this subject. After all, it’s easy to imagine the infamously and almost obsessively profit-oriented boss being the first one calling for people’s jobs had they failed to greenlight a comic book movie sequel to a billion-dollar hit. Now that it flopped so badly and ended up costing the studio so much money, it’s awfully convenient to use the 20/20 vision of hindsight to blame others for a financial mess that occurred under his own watch.
More pressingly, however, this gossip-stirring meeting might have even larger ramifications on Warner Bros.’ upcoming slate of movies. The Bloomberg article frames this as a referendum on both Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, the creative and business minds most involved (and the ones with the most to lose) in this production and several more in the months ahead. The buck ultimately stops with Zaslav, of course, but De Luca and Abdy headlined the trend of handing over incredibly oversized budgets to established filmmakers. While that should hardly be cause for concern among movie fans or even the creatives themselves (as “Joker” director Todd Phillips stated himself in the past), it might very well bode poorly for a string of WB films in the months ahead. Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” and especially Joseph Kosinski’s budget-breaking racing blockbuster “F1” all represent serious box office risks just waiting to bomb — not because they were mistakes to greenlight in the first place, but simply because of their reported budgets.
Should the worst expectations come to pass, will Zaslav think twice before opening his doors to original projects from visionary directors again? Are De Luca and Abdy fighting for their positions? Will I ever stop posing rhetorical questions? While I can’t promise any solutions to that last one, readers would be well-advised to keep an eye on how the rest of 2025 pans out to see how WB fares.
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