Joker has upped the ante and blown Will Smith away, writes Charles Gant in his weekly box office bulletin

The winner: Joker

For years, Disney’s Marvel Studios and Warners’ DC Films have been vying to deliver the biggest blockbusters – but one thing that has tended to unite the two companies is the shape of the box-office arcs of their releases. Marvel and DC titles usually open big, then quickly decline. Case in point: Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame opened in the UK with a stunning £31.4m (plus previews) in late April, then successively declined each weekend by 54 per cent, 69 per cent and 49 per cent. Its final tally of £88.7m was just over 2.8 times the number for the opening three-day weekend.

DC Films’ Joker is a different kind of movie. Although its source is the Batman comic-books, this is a dark drama about a mentally ill man, rather than a CGI-driven superhero action film. Joker surprised with its strong £12.56m debut at UK cinemas – but even more impressive is its second-weekend result: £9.77m, down just 22 per cent from the opening session. The total after ten days is just over £30m.

In the DC canon, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is notable for its relatively sustained success at the box office, propelled by robust audience engagement. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises respectively achieved, with their lifetime grosses, multiples of their opening weekend numbers as follows: 3.75 times, 5.65 times and 3.92 times. In August 2008, The Dark Knight fell only 22 per cent on its second weekend of play – the same as Joker.