Will Joaquin Phoenix don the Joker costume again in a sequel to the 2019 film? We take stock!
Released in October 2019, Joker had won numerous awards, blasting the small world of feature films from comics. Golden Lion at Venice, the film also earned Joaquin Phoenix the Oscar, the BAFTA and the Golden Globe for Best Actor.
The craze around the Clown Prince of Crime has turned into a real phenomenon, the work managing to exceed one billion dollars in worldwide receipts. In France, Joker gathered 5.6 million spectators. A triumph for this iconic supervillain, sworn enemy of Batman.
Did this success give Warner Bros. and director Todd Phillips? Initially, the filmmaker had imagined a trilogy around the character before abandoning the project.
“I first presented the project as a trilogy. Joker was the first film, with me behind the camera, and then there were two other films, with two other directors”confided the director on IGN in December 2019.
“But I really don’t want to say who these filmmakers are, because then it’s going to become a big thing and I’m going to put them in something that I haven’t even told them about. It was just an idea that I had submitted to the Warner Bros studios.he indicated.
At a time when The Batman triumphs in theaters, the question of a sequel to Joker arises again. In May 2021, the project was talked about again through an article published by The Hollywood Reporter about Hollywood’s most powerful lawyers.
It is in this paper that we learned that Todd Philips would have signed to write Joker 2, instantly reviving the rumors of a sequel. This news, which was to be taken with a grain of salt, also raised questions about the timetable for this possible project: what will be the plot? when will the film be shot? Will Joaquin Phoenix be back in the Clown Prince of Crime costume?
A SUITE ALREADY IN PREPARATION?
New information about a second film also emerged in early 2022. According to the site heroic hollywoodwhich cites a source close to Warner Bros., the studio has already received a first version of the screenplay written by Todd Phillips.
The filmmaker would take over the controls for this sequel, which would see Joaquin Phoenix once again become Arthur Fleck, alias the Joker. The 47-year-old actor being very busy, he would not be able to shoot this feature film before 2023. However, this information is not official at all and should be considered with caution.
The brother of the late River Phoenix had mentioned the subject in the columns of The Playlist in October 2021:
“I don’t know if there’s anything else to do with the Joker. Todd Phillips and I would still be filming if we could… Because the possibilities with this character seem endless”he pointed out.
“As we were filming, we started thinking to ourselves, uh, he’s an interesting guy. There are things we could do with this guy that we could explore more. But as to whether we will really? I don’t know”he then kicked into touch.
Joaquin Phoenix is currently focused on filming Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. After having portrayed the Emperor Commodus in Gladiator in 2000, he found the British filmmaker to embody another charismatic Emperor: Bonaparte.