Joker Has Surpassed Every Marvel Movie To Become The Most Profitable Comic Book Movie Ever

Todd Phillips’ Joker movie has been a huge hit this year. It’s been the hit of the year, and it was kind of unexpected.

if you go into the development of Phillips’ movie, you’ll find out that it was a difficult movie to get made.

Executives at Warner Brothers weren’t convinced that the film would do well, so they gave Phillips what they believed to a be a very small budget of $55 million, expecting the writer/director to tell them he needed more money to get the film made.

Instead, he took the money and made Joker, which has now gone on to become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, overtaking Deadpool in the process.

But, if that wasn’t enough, the film then became the most profitable DC Comics movie ever made due to the amount it was making at the box office and its tiny budget.

It literally cost less than half to make than most comic book movies, and it’s been making about the same money at the box office.

Todd Phillips’ Joker movie is the little comic book movie that could

Joaquin Phoenix as Joker in DC Comics’ Joker movie (Credit: Warner Bros.)

Read more: Could Todd Phillips’ Joker Be The Best Comic Book Movie Of The Year?

Long story short, the Joker movie’s been doing extremely well, so well in fact that it was announced by Forbes to be the most profitable comic book ever made.

Here’s what Forbes’ Scott Mendelson had to say about Joker’s success:

With $304.2 million in North America after five weeks in theaters, Joker’s new global cume is around $953 million. Presuming its 32% domestic/68% overseas split holds, then it will have a new global cume of around $957 million by tonight. That will be 15.3x its $62.5 million production budget, which will make the Todd Phillips-directed and Joaquin Phoenix-starring drama more profitable, in terms of budget versus global gross, than Jim Carrey’s The Mask ($351 million on a $23 million budget in 1994).

Joker is now the biggest success story in box office history

Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck in JOKER (Credit: Warner Bros.)

Read more: Here’s The Real Reason Why Joker Doesn’t Have A Post Credits Scene

This basically means that Todd Phillips’ ‘small’ comic book movie has gone on to become the biggest success story in box office story in cinema history:

That means DC Films and Warner Bros.’ Joker is the most profitable comic book movie of all time. In a skewed way, Jokerrepresents every studio’s dream, in that it’s a mid-budget, 2-D title that’s pulling top-tier blockbuster business without relying on China. That it happens to be an R-rated psychological drama is a bonus of sorts, as it’s the third-cheapest $900 million grosser of all time after Bohemian Rhapsody($905 million on a $52 million budget) and The Lion King($968 million on a $55 million budget in 1994). When it tops $1 billion worldwide in the next week or so, it’ll be the cheapest movie to do so, with a budget just under the $63 million spent by Jurassic Park back in 1993.

This is really impressive and will probably help pave the way for other R-rated comic book movies, such as Todd McFarlane’s Spawn movie, to get the greenlight.

Have you seen the Joker movie? If so, let us know what you thought of it in the comments below.

What do you make of this story? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook or Instagram pages!

And if you enjoy listening to film podcasts, why not check out Small Screen Radio wherever you get your podcasts!