NEW YORK — The choices on the movie marquee this weekend included Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, a film about Donald Trump, a “Saturday Night Live” origin story and even Pharrell Williams as a Lego. In the end, all were trounced by an ax-wielding clown.

“Terrifier 3,” a gory, low-budget slasher from the small distributor Cineverse, topped the weekend box office with $18.3 million, according to estimates Sunday. The film, a sequel to 2022’s “Terrifier 2” ($15 million worldwide in ticket sales), brings back the murderous Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and lets him loose, under the guise of Santa, at a Christmas party.

That “Terrifier 3” could notably overperform expectations and leapfrog both major studios and awards hopefuls was only possible due to the disaster of “Joker: Folie à Deux.” After Todd Phillips’ “Joker” sequel, starring Phoenix and Lady Gaga, got off to a much-diminished start last weekend (and a “D” CinemaScore from audiences), the Warner Bros. release fell a staggering 81% in its second weekend, bringing in just $7.1 million.

For a superhero film, such a drop has little precedent. Disappointments like “The Marvels,” “The Flash” and “Shazam Fury of the Gods” all managed better second weekends. Such a mass rejection by audiences and critics is particularly unusually for a follow-up to a massive hit like 2019’s “Joker.” That film, also from Phillips and Phoenix, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide against a $60 million budget.

The sequel was pricier, costing about $200 million to make. That means “Joker: Folie à Deux” is headed for certain box-office disaster. Globally, it’s collected $165.3 million in ticket sales.

“This is an outlier of a weekend if ever there was one,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “If you had asked anyone a month ago or even a week ago: Would ‘Terrifier 3′ be the number one movie amongst all these major-studio films and awards contenders? To have a movie like this come along just shows you that the audience is the ultimate arbiter of what wins at the box office.”

The “Joker” slide allowed “The Wild Robot,” the acclaimed Universal Pictures and DreamWorks animated movie, to take second place in its third weekend with $13.4 million. Strong reviews for Chris Sanders’ adaptation of Peter Brown’s book have led the movie, with Lupita Nyong’o voicing the robot protagonist, to $83.7 million domestically and $148 million worldwide.

The young Donald Trump film “The Apprentice,” distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment in 1,740 theaters, opened in a distant 10th place, managing a paltry $1.6 million in ticket sales.

Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” failed to ignite its nationwide expansion. The film, with an ensemble cast led by Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels, collected $3.4 million from 2,288 locations. The Sony Pictures release, about the backstage drama as the NBC sketch comedy show is about to air for the first time in 1975, will likely need to make more of an impact with audiences to carry it through awards season.

“Piece by Piece,” a Pharrell Williams documentary-biopic hybrid animated in Lego form, had also been hoping to click better with moviegoers. The acclaimed Focus Features release, directed by veteran documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), opened with $3.8 million from 1,865 theaters.

But the debut for “Piece By Piece,” while low for a Lego animated movie, was very high for a documentary. “Piece By Piece,” which had the weekend’s best CinemaScore, an “A” from audiences, could play well for weeks to come.

The film, which was modestly budgeted at $16 million, is also likely to end up the year’s highest grossing doc — if “Piece by Piece” can be called that.

“We Live in Time,” the weepy drama starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, had one of the year’s best per-theater averages in its five-screen opening. The A24 release, which will expand nationwide next weekend, debuted with $255,911 and a $51,000 per-screen average.

Outside of the success of Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (which pulled in $7.1 million in its six weekends of release despite recently launching on video-on-demand), Hollywood’s fall has struggled to get going. Low-budget horror, like “Terrifier 3,” continues to be one good bet in theaters, but this autumn has been mostly characterized by bombs like “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “Megalopolis.”

This time last year, Taylor Swift was giving the box office a massive lift with “The Eras Tour.” This weekend compared with the same time last year was down 45% according to Comscore.