Send in the clowns: $5m Terrifier 3 blasts past Joker 2 in box office humiliation

Todd Phillips’s ‘Joker’ sequel continues to set unwanted records for DC Studios

Damien Leone’s controversial indie horror flick Terrifier 3 is set to dominate Todd Phillips’s Goliath sequel Joker: Folie à Deux at the box office this weekend.

Terrifier 3, which stars David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown, is set to earn an estimated $17m to $18m-plus over three days after an $8.2m opening on Friday (October 11).

Meanwhile, Deadline reports that Warner Bros’s second weekend of Joker: Folie à Deux is posting a -82 percent freefall with around $6.7m to $7m per industry estimates – the worst hold for a character in DC movie history.

2019’s Oscar-winning Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, debuted at $96.2m (£73m) on its way to a total of $1bn (£762m).

The sequel was made with a reported budget of $190m to $200m of which it has returned just $121m worldwide so far.

Early reviews of the film following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last month were mixed, with more negative reviews emerging.

Currently, it has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 33 percent from critics, and a paltry 32 percent audience score based on over 2,500 verified views.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Joker: Folie à Deux is the first Hollywood comic book movie to earn a D CinemaScore from opening day audiences, spelling doom for its box office future. By comparison, Joker earned a favorable B+ CinemaScore.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in ‘Joker: Folie a Deuce’ (left) and David Howard Thornton in ‘Terrifier 3’ (right) (Warner Bros/Cineverse)

CinemaScore measures a film’s appeal by polling early reactions to major releases.

The sequel’s D-rating puts it on par with Russell Crowe’s terribly rated horror film The Exorcism, which is the only other film in the post-pandemic era to score as poor as D, according to Collider.

Even Francis Ford Coppola’s incredibly divisive Megalopolis managed to score higher with a D+.

Meanwhile, Terrifier 3 debuted with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 94 percent, despite prompting walk-outs and vomiting due to its gory nature.

The previous film in the series reportedly made people “pass out” in theaters, which Leone denied was a “marketing ploy” created to promote the independent movie.

The new sequel has already reportedly caused incidents during preview screenings with Signature Entertainment, the film’s UK distributor, saying that their gala screening prompted 11 walkouts – nine during the opening scene – and caused one person to vomit.

Bloody Disgusting is now reporting that France’s Classification Committee has moved to enforce a rare ban on the film, according to the film’s French distributors ESC Éditions, Shadowz Films and Factoris Films.

Now, anyone under the age of 18 in France is banned from seeing Terrifier 3, which has not happened in the country since Saw III hit French cinemas in 2007. The rating is the equivalent of the United States’s NC-17 certification.

The Terrifier series has been one of the biggest independent horror hits of recent years with its 2022 sequel earning more than $15m (£11m) at the worldwide box office from its modest budget of $250,000 (£191,000).

Terrifier 3 and Joker: Folie à Deux are out now in theaters.