"The Joker" in development with Todd Phillips and Martin Scorsese attached? - Part 1

[Wheels]

All of this!!

Phoenix is a fantastic choice for the Joker, but making an origin story centered around him, let alone without Batman, is very risky. Who knows what will happen, but the Joker needs Batman.

It's funny because Gotham is already doing this Batman without Batman thing. I despise it but I am going to give Gotham another go.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Jeff Sneider just mentioned on Collider Movie Talk that he knows Thomas Wayne will be a big part of this film. Coincides with the rumors backs then it would be a period piece.

But it also effectively wipes Joaquin's Joker off the running for ever really facing off Batman in the future. There goes my dream.

So what, we have another universe where the Joker is twice as old as Batman? Oh awesome. This project is off to a great start.

 

[Rorschach2012]

It's funny because Gotham is already doing this Batman without Batman thing. I despise it but I am going to give Gotham another go.

I don't get why everyone hates Gotham. Considering DC's recent track record, it stands out as easily some of the best media they've put out in a while.

 

[Arachnerd]

I don't get why everyone hates Gotham. Considering DC's recent track record, it stands out as easily some of the best media they've put out in a while.

That's a loaded statement, man. Prepare to get response posts from some folks on why Gotham sucks.

 

[Wheels]

Nah we're good. Let's not go into a discussion about Gotham.

 

[samsnee]

Jeff Sneider just mentioned on Collider Movie Talk that he knows Thomas Wayne will be a big part of this film. Coincides with the rumors backs then it would be a period piece.

But it also effectively wipes Joaquin's Joker off the running for ever really facing off Batman in the future. There goes my dream.

So not a Joker movie. A movie about a guy who turns into the Joker at the end, like I assumed.

The marketing is going to play up that this is the Joker but I guarantee you don’t see him fully formed til the last 15 minutes.

 

[Jonwo]

I suspect The Joker film is being treated as a one-off rather than a potential franchise hence the lower budget.

 

[RomanticPenguin]

the letoker movie isn't happening with or without pheonix's version. That was right alongside cyborg and deadshot as movies that i knew weren't going to happen as soon as we heard they were kicked into development.

faaaaaaaaaacts!

 

[RomanticPenguin]

does anyone have the picture of the "hahaha" eyebrows?

I posted them once but can;t find

 

[Rorschach2012]

I just don't know why they're doing this if they intend to keep Leto... get rid of him and just replace him with Joaquin. WB really is as crazy as everyone has been saying. I hate to say it but they really are Fox/Sony level. Disney/MCU is the only studio that knows wtf they're doing.

 

[Greens]

Jeff Sneider just mentioned on Collider Movie Talk that he knows Thomas Wayne will be a big part of this film. Coincides with the rumors backs then it would be a period piece.

But it also effectively wipes Joaquin's Joker off the running for ever really facing off Batman in the future. There goes my dream.

He makes a good point. It could be easier to attract top notch talent with these one-offs because you're not pushing a multi-film contract on them.

 

[FunkMiller]

It's funny because Gotham is already doing this Batman without Batman thing. I despise it but I am going to give Gotham another go.

The just cancelled Gotham you mean? The show that struggled to garner high ratings across its entire run? Let’s not use that as an example of how not featuring Batman in something leads to success...

 

[FunkMiller]

Jeff Sneider just mentioned on Collider Movie Talk that he knows Thomas Wayne will be a big part of this film. Coincides with the rumors backs then it would be a period piece.

But it also effectively wipes Joaquin's Joker off the running for ever really facing off Batman in the future. There goes my dream.

If true... dumb as a sack of dead spaniels.

The Joker’s creation, character and rasion d’etre is inextricably tied up with Batman. No Batman, no Joker. To try and do a Joker origin story that does not feature Batman would be like trying to do a Spider-man movie with no spiders in it.

This smacks of DC’s idiotic mentality of ‘protecting’ the Batman character for just high profile movies. All of which have been utter ****, recently of course.

 

[Boom]

Creators are well within their rights to put their own spin on these characters if they think there's a good story there. That's the entire basis of the Elseworlds label.

That's not to say you have to like it, and this could still end up being an awful film all the same. But I don't subscribe to the idea that characters HAVE to be shaped or molded a certain way. That's how things become stagnant. For how awful Suicide Squad and Jared Leto's Joker are, I actually thought it was a breath of fresh air to see The Joker involved in a movie that had little to do with Batman. Shows that the character has potential beyond being a Batman appendage.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

does anyone have the picture of the "hahaha" eyebrows?

I posted them once but can;t find

They’re better off being left unfound. To do so would be an act of cruelty!

I just don't know why they're doing this if they intend to keep Leto... get rid of him and just replace him with Joaquin. WB really is as crazy as everyone has been saying. I hate to say it but they really are Fox/Sony level. Disney/MCU is the only studio that knows wtf they're doing.

The fact that they even got him for one movie is a godsend in itself, I’m pretty sure one of the biggest things that interested him was the fact that he didn’t have to commit to multiple films. He’s gonna go all out for this one film and walk away.

 

[marcvader]

Creators are well within their rights to put their own spin on these characters if they think there's a good story there. That's the entire basis of the Elseworlds label.

That's not to say you have to like it, and this could still end up being an awful film all the same. But I don't subscribe to the idea that characters HAVE to be shaped or molded a certain way. That's how things become stagnant. For how awful Suicide Squad and Jared Leto's Joker are, I actually thought it was a breath of fresh air to see The Joker involved in a movie that had little to do with Batman. Shows that the character has potential beyond being a Batman appendage.

I agree completely with this only when it comes to characters that have been done already the commonly depicted way which in this case Joker and Batman for that matter fit the bill. Have at it.

 

[Greens]

Many people would agree that The Dark Knight is the ultimate Batman/Joker film. It's fine to put the character in different situations.

 

[The Guard]

I’ve stopped paying attention to a lot of the Leto Joker complaints, as they tend to boil down to “He was just too over the top and not a lead and tattoos", and the hyperbole is just…I get it, Ledger and TDK were great and they didn’t hit the sweet spot with SQUAD, but there’s still a ton of potential there.

It’s hard not to be excited about this project, though. Phoenix is fantastic, and the concept and creative team are intriguing. Especially if they finally dig into Thomas and Martha Wayne beyond just being Bruce Wayne’s parents and the royalty of Gotham.

I can’t bring myself to care about the two Jokers thing. As a fan of the mythology, I love the idea of The Joker being able to reinvent himself, so even two wildly different Jokers tonally could work.

And it's unlikely, but if they really want Phoenix to show up in a Batman film down the line, and he wants to do it, there are ways to make it work, especially if Reeves' films are "prequels". Makeup can be used to do all kinds of things, especially when it comes to age. The Joker has always been sort of supernaturally young anyway, and has been shown to mellow with age, but not all that much.

I dig the idea of a sort of Elseworlds take. And if this experiment is successful, think about the possibilities for future projects.

 

[Flint Marko]

Nah the complaints boil down to "he was terrible", because he was terrible.

 

[Cobblepot]

Let Phoenix Joker break the 4th wall in the trailers for SS2 and kill of Leto's Joker. Then just insert Joa-ker into the DCEU.

 

[Rorschach2012]

I’ve stopped paying attention to a lot of the Leto Joker complaints, as they tend to boil down to “He was just too over the top and not a lead and tattoos", and the hyperbole is just…I get it, Ledger and TDK were great and they didn’t hit the sweet spot with SQUAD, but there’s still a ton of potential there.

It’s hard not to be excited about this project, though. Phoenix is fantastic, and the concept and creative team are intriguing. Especially if they finally dig into Thomas and Martha Wayne beyond just being Bruce Wayne’s parents and the royalty of Gotham.

I can’t bring myself to care about the two Jokers thing. As a fan of the mythology, I love the idea of The Joker being able to reinvent himself, so even two wildly different Jokers tonally could work.

And it's unlikely, but if they really want Phoenix to show up in a Batman film down the line, and he wants to do it, there are ways to make it work, especially if Reeves' films are "prequels". Makeup can be used to do all kinds of things, especially when it comes to age. The Joker has always been sort of supernaturally young anyway, and has been shown to mellow with age, but not all that much.

I dig the idea of a sort of Elseworlds take. And if this experiment is successful, think about the possibilities for future projects.

Nah man, the primary complaints about Leto boil down to his performance. The visual stuff wouldn’t have mattered if people enjoyed his performance.

 

[Greens]

Phoenix talks about the Joker movie openly for the first time

http://collider.com/joaquin-phoenix-joker-movie-details/

“I take a lot of time and consideration when making decisions and what I’m gonna work on always. So, in some ways, the process, which is obviously reading a script and meeting a filmmaker and then continuing to have meetings and discussions with Todd [Phillips]. I think he’s very impressive and he seems to have a very interesting understanding of this world and what he’s trying to say. And so there is something very appealing about that and working with him on this particular project. It feels unique, it is its own world in some ways, and maybe, mostly, it scares the ****ing **** out of me or something. It might as well be the thing that scares you the most.”

“It’s a magnified version of what you deal with as an actor. So, when you get a script, obviously, the writer— usually for me, it’s the writer/director, last several years I’ve worked with a filmmaker that was the writer and director— and they have their expectation, and they’ve imagined things in their head, and they’ve imagined different actors, and suddenly you take it on and so there’s this moment of anxiety of ‘Did I live up to their expectations?’ And at some point you have to just own it and say like, ‘I can’t consider who they might have thought up before or what the movie was for the 6 months ago, this is what it is now and I have to find my way into it.’ And so in some ways it’s a very similar experience, right? But it feels magnified because it’s not just one person’s expectations, but what you’re telling me is that there’s at least a dozen.”

“Three or four years ago, I called my agent and said ‘Why don’t they want to take one of these characters and just make a lower budget film about it, a movie but a character study, and why not take one of the villains?’ And I thought, ‘You can’t do the Joker, because, you know, it’s just you can’t do that character, it’s just been done.’ So I was trying to think of other characters, and he said ‘I’ll set up a general meeting with Warner Bros.’ And I said ‘I’m not gonna go, I can’t go to a general meeting.’ So I completely forgot about it, and so then I heard about this idea, I was like, ‘Oh that’s so exciting, that’s the kind of experience I wanted to have, with a movie based on a comic character.’ I felt like you could get something on screen.”

“I wouldn’t quite classify this as like any genre. I wouldn’t say it’s a superhero movie, or a studio movie or a … It feels unique, and I think more then anything, and probably the most important thing, is Todd seems very passionate about it and very giving, and so that’s exciting. I think, underneath the excitement of these films, and the size of them, there are these incredible characters that are dealing with real life struggles. And sometimes that is uncovered and exposed, and sometimes it isn’t, and so I always felt, like, there were characters in comics that were really interesting and deserve the opportunity to be kind of studied. And so I think that’s what Todd sees appealing about this idea.’

 

[Boom]

Yeah I am so here for this, even if it ends up crashing and burning.

 

[BatLobster]

Hey, I mean he's saying good things.

I'm a bit torn on the idea. I definitely prefer The Joker more as an unknown, and I think the dynamic between him and Batman is what can really elevate both characters and create something special.

At the same time, there have been attempts to do one-off Joker stories that I think have worked, like Lee Bermejo's graphic novel for instance. I don't have so much of a problem with it as a concept, but in terms of branding I do think this Elseworlds thing could be potentially very muddy and send mixed signals to the audience. It's great from a creative standpoint, but I think the marketing angle is still an unknown quantity and a risk.

For instance, say Pheonix's Joker turns out great- but he's just a one and done, and has nothing to do with this new Batman universe that Matt Reeves is building, now Reeves has to not only create a new version of the Joker if he wants to use him, but create one in a context where there's another big screen Joker that's fresh in everyone's mind.

Obviously, multiple incarnations of these characters are always existing simultaneously in various forms of media. The more untested thing is doing that from movie to movie. But it's also easy to see why WB might feel like, "F*** it, we have nothing to lose" at this point. And if we end up getting a great movie out of it, then I'm all for it.

 

[Boom]

It's great from a creative standpoint, but I think the marketing angle is still an unknown quantity and a risk.

For instance, say Pheonix's Joker turns out great- but he's just a one and done, and has nothing to do with this new Batman universe that Matt Reeves is building, now Reeves has to not only create a new version of the Joker if he wants to use him, but create one in a context where there's another big screen Joker that's fresh in everyone's mind.

I expect the executives at WB have already shared this same thought, and I imagine that they'd play it by ear in that situation.

If this movie comes out and performs very well, and Phoenix absolutely knocks it out of the park, there's no way WB doesn't at least ask the guy if he'd be interested in sitting down with Reeves on a Batman film. And if Phoenix says no, then you move on. Perhaps not ideal, but you at least extended the offer.