DC Studios THREAD - GunnVerse Begins - The Penguin out 9/19 then every Sunday on MAX

[MVP]

Really good episode of The Penguin. This may be the best show on TV right now.

 

[thegreatbean]

Wifey and I wait til Sunday to watch the Penguin. ( Nothing else to watch)
That Ep. 3 was intensely good. So many powerful scenes. Especially in the end.
Can’t wait for the next one.

 

[WASPS ANDD ASPS]

Damn bruh @ the 1st 10mins of episode 3

 

[rfx45]

whole episode is crazy and they manage to keep that tense feeling throughout

colin got to win the damn emmy for this role, dude looking like that sill has that damn crazy charm that got kind of got victor hooked

 

[JusaVibe]

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX: Warner Bros. Gave Todd Phillips Final Cut; Venice Premiere Now Considered A Disaster

Joker: Folie à Deux's terrible weekend continues, with a dismal opening weekend and a new report which points much of the blame at filmmaker Todd Phillips. You can find more details on that right here...

comicbookmovie.com

After arguing that no one who watched Joker wanted a musical sequel, they argue that Warner Bros. Discovery's biggest misstep was premiering the movie at the Venice Film Festival last month. Because of that, Joker: Folie à Deux sat on Rotten Tomatoes for a month with middling reviews, so why showcase a mediocre - or downright bad - movie at such a high-profile event?

"Sources tell me it was all part of Warner Bros. appeasing Phillips," the trade writes, "which is why they allowed him to make this auteur-ish Stephen Sondheim-like feature in the first place. Between the Hangover franchise and Joker, Warner Bros. has reaped $2.5 billion off of Phillips’ fare at the box office. What do you do with a director whose done that much for you? Give him final cut."

Had the movie skipped Venice and been screened earlier this week (as is typically the case with high-profile comic book movies), it may have added a further $10 million to its opening weekend.

It's also revealed that Joker: Folie à Deux wasn't tested before being released and didn't go over budget with that reported $190 million - $200 million spend.

However, at least $50 million of that went to filmmaker Todd Phillips and stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga.

This **** sounds like Entourage and the mess with Billy Walsh/Medellin

 

[rolaholic]

 

[Mark Antony]

What if this was like performance art?

 

[ajiiiplatinum]

i'll say one more thing about Joker, whoever made the trailer for that dumpster fire used pretty much every second of action that movie had.

i just saw the trailer and laughed just thinking how many people are going in with super high expectations and leaving with a stank face

Joke is on them

 

[tay1]

The movie was disappointing and I left thinking that it was an unnecessary movie and didn’t need to be made but nowhere near as bad as the internet is trying to make it. I feel like a lot of groupthink is going on and social media doing its thing where it’s cool to continue piling on something. This shouldn’t have a score lower than Madame Webb. This is like a 50%-60% type movie.

 

[pmatic]

 

[Nike Jordan]

If you know...

 

[Benny Hinn]

My only gripe is we’re almost halfway through the season and still no mention of Batman. He better be in the finale.

 

[MarvelSux]

he was mentioned in the pilot

 

[headdetective]

Batman on vacation

 

[dakingii]

Him showing up only in the last episode would be perfect actually.

 

[headdetective]

How do you not mention the risk of Batman in an underground war?

 

[JusaVibe]

How do you not mention the risk of Batman in an underground war?

Exactly. He would of been there as soon as he heard about it.

Idk maybe the dude is on vacation.

 

[rolaholic]

 

[you go boy]

was checking out comments on reddit and they said it was a musical... that's when I decided to pass on watching it in the theatre

 

[rfx45]

they really got to make a doc for the downfall of DCEU and add this joker 2 fiasco in there as the millionth nail on the coffin​

​

​

Inside the ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Debacle: Todd Phillips ‘Wanted Nothing to Do’ With DC on the $200 Million Misfire​

On Sept. 30, Lady Gaga blew kisses to fans outside the TCL Chinese Theatre ahead of the premiere of “Joker: Folie à Deux,” while Joaquin Phoenix dropped his typical solemn facade and flashed a few smiles from the red carpet. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav dropped by the after-party at Sunset Tower and mingled with the film’s two high-paid lead actors as the meatless sliders (vegan Phoenix’s idea) made the rounds. For all the star wattage on display, there were some notable no-shows — namely, DC Studios toppers James Gunn and Peter Safran.

Insiders say the duo’s glaring absence for a film that is based on one of the biggest draws in the DC canon underscores a dysfunctional dynamic that played out behind the scenes on the ill-fated Warner Bros. musical. Todd Phillips “wanted nothing to do with DC” during the making of the film, says one agent familiar with the director’s unique carve-out, which allowed him to bypass any oversight from the brand’s gatekeepers. Although Gunn has publicly supported the film on social media, Phillips has distanced himself from DC. As the animated title-card sequence unspooled inside the iconic Hollywood cinema in the opening minutes, it became apparent that Phillips had just given DC the middle finger. There was no DC Studios logo.

“If the first movie was about some down-on-his-luck, mentally ill guy in a downtrodden city, it makes maybe $150 [million] worldwide. Not a billion,” says a source familiar with the internal awkwardness. “People showed up because that guy was Joker.”

(A DC spokesperson downplays any tensions and says Gunn was busy directing the Max series “Peacemaker” in Atlanta, which had lost a day of production due to Hurricane Helene, while Safran was sick. A Warners spokesperson notes that a DC logo appears at the end of the Joker sequel. Phillips declined to comment for this story.)

Now that the dust has settled on the sequel’s disastrous opening weekend, plenty of soul-searching is taking place on the Burbank lot. The overarching question being asked is: Why spend $200 million to make — and nearly $100 million to market — a tentpole that ignores the DC fan base? And “ignores” may be putting it mildly. As a Rolling Stone review of the film succinctly put it: “‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Has a Message for Fans: Go F-ck Yourselves.”

Alas, the fanboys and fangirls stayed home, resulting in a shocking $37.7 million domestic opening for Phillips’ follow-up to his 2019 “Joker,” an enormous success that cost just $60 million and earned $1.1 billion. Such disregard for the base has brand repercussions. After all, Joker is not some obscure character. The Batman foil is by far the most high-profile villain in comics, spanning either DC or Marvel. But given that Phillips made such a wildly profitable first “Joker” for Warner Bros. — not to mention three “Hangover” movies — motion picture group chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy seemed unwilling to say no to their prized director with their first green light.

The movie began production in December 2022, two months after Gunn and Safran took control of DC, and many expected the duo to provide notes and feedback on the R-rated musical, especially given the capital outlay involved. But Phillips balked and would only liaise with De Luca and Abdy. And he has done little to dispel the appearance of friction, even though Gunn and Safran were on hand for the first director’s cut screening for the studio. When asked by a Collider reporter if the production process changed when the pair succeeded DC head Walter Hamada or if they had any input, Phillips replied, “With all due respect to them, this is kind of a Warner Bros. movie.”

And even Warner Bros.’ feedback was sometimes ignored. Sources say Zaslav met one-on-one with Phillips shortly after WarnerMedia and Discovery merged in April 2022 and was open to filming in Los Angeles if the director would make the sequel at a lower price point. (The studio preferred London, where it would have cost about 20% less.) But Phillips insisted on shooting in Los Angeles, and the budget didn’t change. (A Warners spokesperson says the studio “supported the decision to film in Los Angeles” and the Zaslav-Phillips powwow was merely a meet-and-greet where they discussed what else the director wanted to make there.) Insiders say studio brass did not want to debut the film at the Venice Film Festival, as it had done five years ago with “Joker,” but Phillips pushed back. A Warners spokesperson says the studio “fully supported the decision to bring the film to Venice.”

Other battles of will between Phillips and Warners ensued. Phillips refused to test screen “Joker 2.” So its premiere in Venice marked the first time an audience saw it. The critics rejected it, and the film tallied a disastrous 33% score on Rotten Tomatoes well before earning a dismal “D” CinemaScore. To put that grade into context, the much reviled “Madame Web” landed a “C+” earlier this year. (A Warners spokesperson says, “Given the film contains spoilers, the studio did not want to unnecessarily divulge plot points too early to test audiences, but rather, allow moviegoers to discover the film in their own time.”)

Making a sequel to a billion-dollar movie, whether it’s “Aquaman” or “Joker,” is considered a smart bet. But with its outsize budget, which included $20 million upfront for Phoenix, $20 million for Phillips and $12 million for Gaga, the film needed to make at least $450 million theatrically to break even — a now unlikely scenario. Warner Bros. is already on the back foot following a series of recent money losers, including “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and “The Color Purple.” The parent company’s stock price remains in the cellar, near an all-time low at $7.67 a share.

“This is a black eye for Warner Bros. at a key time, with the industry expecting a hit,” says Wall Street analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “The timing could not be worse.”

“Joker: Folie à Deux” also may have suffered from not having Bradley Cooper’s voice at the table. Cooper, who was a producer on 2019’s “Joker” and is known for his commercial instincts including his low-budget hit “A Star Is Born” with Gaga, was not involved with the sequel after dissolving his producing partnership with Phillips in 2021.

“No one could get through to Todd,” says one source directly involved with the film. “And the one thing about genre stuff: If you don’t listen and pay attention to what the fan expectations are, you’re going to fail.”

In fact, catering to the fan base was supposed to be the strategy. When the Zaslav era began, the CEO touted a 10-year plan for DC that would take a page from the Marvel playbook, in which all films adhere to the singular vision of president Kevin Feige. Yet somehow the “Joker” sequel was allowed to skirt that mandate, with Phillips operating in an alternate silo from the newly installed DC chiefs. Not surprisingly, the core DC fans revolted, and the result is damage to the brand.

“This is a ‘Speed 2’ level of disaster — with Warner Bros. massively overspending on a sequel, only to see its audience all but abandon the film domestically,” says box– office analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations. “Warner Bros. has the biggest hit of the fall season in ‘Beetlejuice 2’ and now likely the largest flop, too, in ‘Joker 2.’ Such is the way of the sequel. The truth is, the creators of ‘Joker 2’ went a direction [that] the majority of audiences didn’t want to follow. Ultimately, choices were made, and unfortunately, they didn’t align with moviegoers’ taste.”

 

[tay1]

Shameful

 

[pmatic]

 

[JusaVibe]

Was just about to post this. Excellent casting. I hated that Rebel Ridge movie but it shows how he could play John Stewart and he certainly looks the part and can act.

 

[rfx45]

 

[rolaholic]