© 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved/Nikos Tavernise(NEW YORK) — Director Todd Phillips kept the budget of his Joker film low, in part to make the chancy project irresistible to Warner Bros. Four weeks now since its release, another benefit has come to light: serious profit.
The budget of the R-rated film was a low $55-$70 million, downright cheap for a superhero movie. By comparison, Avengers: Endgame reportedly cost $356 million, in part because there were no huge computer generated battle scenes to pay for. Which means, as Deadline reports, the Joaquin Phoenix movie is well its way to becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time — as much as a half-billion dollars of pure profit when its theatrical and home video runs end.
If so, that would put Joker‘s profit on par with the much bigger-budgeted Avengers: Endgame, which holds the crown of being the highest grossing film of all time, before costs.
As it stands now, Deadline says “Joker‘s profit is also not that far from Black Panther‘s [of] $476.8M” and is also, “way ahead” of Warner Bros. biggest superhero hit, Aquaman, which swam away with $260.5 million of profit.
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