October box office down 17% as Joker disappoints
October box office totalled £63m, a 17% decrease compared with last year, according to the latest figures from Comscore.
The top film of the month, Joker: Folie à Deux, earned just £10.3m, including an opening weekend of £5.6m. The figure is far below the takings for the first Joker film, which grossed £58.3m in the UK during its full run.
Joker: Folie à Deux, however, is already heading to streaming services after its subpar performance globally.
It is a disappointing month relative to expectations. Last month, Digital Cinema Media content business director Tom Linay told The Media Leader that October “should be up year on year […] if things come in as expected”.
But Joker: Folie à Deux performed well below expectations following poor critical and audience reception, and a relatively weak film slate did not do enough to attract other cinemagoers.
Speaking to The Media Leader in reaction to the latest figures, Linay said October’s lacklustre performance was “almost solely driven by the underperformance of Joker: Folie a Deux“.
He added: “The first trailer really seemed to hit the mark and was reportedly one of Warner Bros’ most successful trailer launches ever. But after the film premiered to middling reviews at Venice at the start of September, it seemed like interest just gradually fell away.
“Then the film was released and seemed to alienate the fans of the first film, which meant it fell away quickly after it opened.”
Linay previously noted that October typically performs better than September, in part thanks to schools’ half-term, although many bigger releases tend to be scheduled for later in the autumn to capitalise on the festive season.
Last year, October’s box office was buoyed by the success of the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film and Trolls Band Together, as well as modest performance from a slew of horror films and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Other top films this October included DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot (£9.5m), Sony superhero flick Venom: The Last Dance (£6.9m) and horror film Smile 2 (£4.9m).
September’s top performer, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, earned another £4.3m in October to bring its running total to £25.9m. Linay called it “one of the biggest success stories of 2024”, noting it “surpassed industry expectations to become the fifth biggest film of 2024”.
Year-to-date box office is now trailing 11% behind last year, although a strong slate of films are scheduled for release in November and December that could help make up the discrepancy.
“While Joker: Folie à Deux disappointed, with Paddington in Peru, Gladiator II, Wicked and Moana 2 all looking good and released across consecutive weekends in November, the disappointment should pass quickly,” suggested Linay.
This week, the Advertising Association and Warc downwardly revised its full-year adspend outlook for cinema, predicting a 2.1% decline — a drop of 6.5 percentage points compared with their forecast in July.