‘Joker’ is now the most profitable comic book movie ever

Warner Bros. was clearly always confident that Joker was going to do well.

That’s exactly why it entered the psychological comic-book movie into the Venice Film Festival at the end of August, where it received critical acclaim and duly won the Golden Lion award. After screening at the Toronto Film Festival, though, the mood and reviews turned on Joker.

But all of this discourse appear to have helped it immensely at the box office. In fact, not only is Joker already on the cusp of grossing $1 billion around the world, something that is expected to happen eventually, but Forbes is reporting that its current intake of $957 million (£749 million) already makes it the most profitable comic-book movie of all time.

Joker has become the recipient of this honour because, having done all of the math, Forbes has figured out that it has made 15.3X its $62.5 million production budget. Of course, Avengers: Endgame is actually the highest grossing movie of all time, but the $2.798 billion grossing blockbuster cost somewhere between $350 million and $400 million to make.

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There’s every chance that Joker’s box office numbers will increase and increase for quite a few more weeks to come, too. That’s because it is expected to be a major contender in the upcoming awards season, as Joaquin Phoenix is one of the front-runners for a Best Actor Oscar gong, while various other members of Joker’s cast and crew will be hopeful that they can pick up some prizes, too.

That’s exactly what happened last year, as Rami Malek’s pursuit of a Best Actor Oscar kept Bohemian Rhapsody relevant, convinced more and more people to go and watch the film, which lead it to a gross of $903.7 million, as well as an Academy Award for him, and four more for the film, too.