I think the marks against Joker’s potential box office are pretty obvious, but I don’t think they involve the character itself.
The positives:
- It’s a comic book movie, so automatic audience
- Phoenix is apparently phenomenal in it (though there are some suggestions of over-acting)
The negatives:
- It’s rated R
- It’s apparently very dark and disturbing/depressing
- It’s violent
Because of it’s rating, though, the comic book advantage is immediately cut down significantly. No kids or families. It being dark and disturbing probably limits re-watches and limits it’s word-of-mouth audience.
Looking at the performance of R rated movies at the box office, there are 17 in history that have exceeded $200M domestic. Most of them are funny, or have a high entertainment value. A few are horror movies, which have their own embedded audience (people love being scared). And a few are dramas with a wide audience.
The closest comparable I can see is Logan, which made $226M. It had a lot of the same things going for it and a lot of the same negatives, with the major difference being that instead of being a depressing/disturbing character study, it was an action movie. It was well received (better scores on RT and Meta as it stands now), had random bits of Oscar talk, and all the things that supposedly make the Joker special.
So I don’t know. $300M seems very high. It has few of the things that helps films hit that mark, and plenty of things that stops them from doing it.
Even looking at Revenant, which was another dark, rated R, acting tour-de-force, with a more bankable star and a ton more awards hype. It hit like $170M. I don’t think “but it’s from a comic book” adds $130M to that number when you take kids and families out of the picture.
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