Joker box office SMASHES records at opening – Joaquin Phoenix set to top Justice League?

Following Christopher Nolan’s billion-dollar Dark Knight trilogy, Warner Bros needed to reboot Batman once again. Setting up the DCEU, Ben Affleck was cast opposite Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel. However, the CGI-heavy Batman v Superman and Justice League failed to win over critics or the box office despite the hundreds of millions pumped into the comic book movies. But then the studio decided to take a gamble after The Hangover director Todd Phillips pitching a stripped-back, low-budget Joker origin movie and boy has it paid off at the box office.

The Joaquin Phoenix-led Joker has already had the biggest October opening of all time, topping Tom Hardy’s Venom with $93.5 million domestically.

That also makes the Batman spin-off the fourth largest R-rated film in history behind both Deadpool movies and It.

While Joker’s opening weekend’s worldwide total was $234 million for a film with a budget of just $55 million.

With such an opening, it’s within the realms of possibility for the movie to top Justice League’s worldwide total of $657.9 million.

Certainly, Batman’s arch-nemesis is a major player in popular culture which could help explain the success.

Reviews, meanwhile, have been polarised with the film on just 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.

READ MORE: JOKER 2: WILL ROBERT PATTINSON’S BATMAN FACE JOAQUIN PHOENIX’S CLOWN PRINCE OF CRIME?

Nevertheless, many of the positive ones give five stars calling Joker a masterpiece, as it won the Golden Lion at Venice, while the poorer ones dismiss it as pretentious and disappointing.

If anything the divisiveness of opinion has sparked intrigue, conversation and debate around Joker, encouraging audiences to flock to it so they can make their own minds up.

Then there’s the controversy surrounding the film’s depiction of violence and mental health.

Not to mention police presence in cinemas across the US following the 2012 The Dark Knight Rises shooting by a man who dyed his hair orange and supposedly identified as The Joker.

There have even been reports of a California movie theatre being evacuated due to a “credible threat”.

While reports on Twitter from a New York cinema claim audience members fled before the film finished.

Allegedly, a man cheered and clapped every time someone was killed on-screen in Joker and this made people worry he would “start hurting people.”

Despite the controversy, Joaquin Phoenix currently has the best odds to win the 2020 Best Actor Oscar for the role.

On 8-13 and 4-7, the highly acclaimed actor has never won an Academy Award, despite three previous nominations – so maybe this will be his year.

Joker is in cinemas now.