Sad clown: Joker 2 tops nominations for Razzies
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Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie A Deux.
PHOTO: WBEI
LOS ANGELES – Joker: Folie A Deux was nominated for seven Razzies on Jan 21, leaving the sad clown atop the annual tongue-in-cheek list of the worst movies of the year.
The flop musical follow-up to 2019’s billion-dollar-grossing Joker picked up unwanted nods such as for Worst Picture and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel.
American actor Joaquin Phoenix – who won Best Actor at the 2020 Oscars for the first Joker film – was nominated for Worst Actor, alongside singer-actress Lady Gaga for Worst Actress. They were also nominated for Worst Screen Combo. American film-maker Todd Phillips is up for Worst Director, with the film in contention for Worst Screenplay.
Joker: Folie A Deux collected US$200 million (S$270 million) – around one-fifth of its predecessor’s box-office takings, despite being far more expensive to make – and was savaged by critics.
In a year of several high-profile, expensive flops, the parody prizes gave six nods to American film-maker Francis Ford Coppola’s confusing epic Megalopolis, and American actress Dakota Johnson’s much-mocked superhero spin-off Madame Web. Fawning presidential biopic Reagan and video-game adaptation Borderlands equally incurred the wrath of Razzie voters, with six each.
American comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted, a somewhat surreal original story for Pop-Tarts pastries, earned four.
Voted for by some 1,200 members of an irreverent group that any film fan can join, the Razzies – or Golden Raspberries – were created as an antidote to the movie industry’s self-obsessed series of glitzy award shows.
The winners will be revealed on March 1, a day before the 2025 Academy Awards. Nominations for the Oscars will be announced on Jan 23. AFP
