As well as toppling 'Deadpool' as the biggest R-rated movie of all time, 'Joker' now has the title of most profitable comic-book movie ever made.
Against a reported production budget of $62.5 million, 'Joker' has now made $949 million worldwide and is on track to cross the billion-dollar mark by next week. Believe it or not, the most profitable comic-book movie prior to 'Joker' wasn't any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It was - wait for it - 'The Mask', the 1994 comedy with Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz. With a then-huge production budget of $23 million, 'The Mask' ended up making $351 million worldwide. The movie was based on a series of Dark Horse Comics that began in the '80s, and continued right up until 2015.
Considering the huge box office 'Joker' has managed to pull in, not to mention the Oscar talk surrounding Joaquin Phoenix's performance, you've got to imagine that Warner Bros. are now giving serious thought to taking this kind of approach with all future comic-book adaptations.
After all, the likes of 'Aquaman' and 'Wonder Woman' - well-received and profitable, though they were - still saw Warner Bros. taking on huge budgets to make them happen. 'Joker', meanwhile, had a mid-sized budget as the studio wasn't all that jazzed about the dark subject matter, or how it wouldn't be able to generate some of the merchandising opportunities that are so lucrative for comic-book movies.
The question now is whether future comic-book movies will go down this route, or stay as they are with big budgets, big names and big CGI.
