Culture Crave newsletter — #4 🃏

Happy Tuesday, readers! This week we’re talking about what went down with Joker 2, upcoming Star Wars games, the future of the John Wick franchise, and more

Joker 2 is looking to avoid the same fate as The Marvels and Alice Through the Looking Glass, which are the only sequels to films that grossed over $1B but ultimately bombed at the box office. It still has yet to release in Japan and China, the latter of which did not screen the first Joker film. Despite opening with a worldwide gross of $121M, it still fell short of even The Flash, which debuted at $130M worldwide and ended its theatrical run with just $270M. Additionally, Joker 2’s Cinemascore of D was much lower than The Flash's B score. Given these factors, it’s looking like Joker 2 will face significant financial losses 🃏

This is now the 6th straight DC film that flopped or worse — including Black Adam, Shazam 2, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman 2 📉

With the positive reception of The Penguin, Matt Reeves’ sequel to The Batman appears well-positioned for success. However, all eyes are now on James Gunn's Superman and his new DC universe, which already has 13 other projects in development. Are we getting ahead of ourselves here with that many projects set for one unproven universe? We’ll see next year when the film goes up against Jurassic World 4 and Fantastic Four in the same month 🍿

With news of Star Wars Outlaws underperforming (reportedly just 1M sold copies in the first month), we’re looking ahead at what’s next for video games from the galaxy far, far, away ✨

All of these projects, including the KOTOR remake which has faced some challenges, are still in the development phase. Unfortunately, it appears that nearly all are likely a few years away from being ready for release

Sharpen your katanas, because we have a lot of big-time samurai projects coming up 🥷

The marketing cycle has started for the next film in the John Wick franchise — Ballerina, starring Ana De Armas and Keanu Reeves. Here’s the first trailer. Lionsgate has plans to continue expanding the franchise 🎥

That’s all for this week. Hit the subscribe button if you’re new and enjoyed it 🤝

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