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Joker: Folie à Deux has plunged from the top of the North American box office, suffering a massive 80% drop from last weekend’s chart-topping debut of $40m (£30.65m) to just $7.1m.

That is a record collapse for a comic-book film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

It was knocked off its perch by indie horror film Terrifier 3, which took an estimated $18.2m over the weekend.

The Joker sequel was also beaten into third spot by animated film The Wild Robot, which held on to second place, taking $13.4m.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice fell one spot to fourth, taking $7m.

Film critics have offered a range of views about Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, calling it "bleak and daring" but also "depressingly dull and plodding".

Rounding out the North American top five was comedy-drama Piece by Piece, which uses Lego animation and features a stellar voice cast including Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake and Busta Rhymes.

'Election interference'

Meanwhile, The Apprentice, a film about Donald Trump, managed only to open in the number-10 spot, with $1.6m.

The film will have its UK premiere as part of the London Film Festival on Tuesday.

It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, in May, attracting mostly good reviews from critics but a legal threat from the former president.

The biopic traces the US presidential candidate's origin story as an ambitious young property developer in 1970s and 80s New York.

His spokesman back in May described the film, which features a scene where he is seen raping his first wife Ivana, as "garbage", "pure fiction" and "election interference by Hollywood elites".

Now Trump has criticised the film, writing in a late-night post on his Truth Social app that he saw it as a “politically disgusting hatchet job”.

The film begins with a disclaimer that many of its events are fictionalised.