With all of the seemingly random projects littering the DCEU you’d be forgiven if Joker & Harley Quinn slipped your mind. Already we have Margot Robbie and Jared Leto’s maniacal duo appearing in Suicide Squad 2, while she also has Birds of Prey casting up now, and he has a solo Joker movie in the works. But there’s also that Todd Phillips/Joaquin Phoenix Joker film that has nothing to do with anything. It’s all really weird right now, and that doesn’t even touch on the Batman/Superman situations, which may require entirely new stars in those roles.
So the Joker and Harley Quinn movie understandably has fallen through the cracks, but it is apparently happening. Or at least writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are talking to Metro like it is, and that their script for it is already finished. The screenwriting pair have a long track record with Crazy Stupid Love, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Focus, and more. However, it’s their past on the vulgar comedy Bad Santa and NBC weeper This is Us that has inspired their take on the DC Universe’s psychotic couple…
“The whole thing starts with Harley kidnapping Dr. Phil. Played by Dr. Phil hopefully. Because [she] and the Joker are having problems with their relationship. We had so much fun. I don’t know if we have had more fun writing a script in our career.”, Ficarra said.
It’s unclear if he was being serious there in describing the opening scene, but it sounds pretty crazy. My gut telsl me Ficarra feels free enough to give something like that way is for two reasons: either it’s not true in the least, or he knows the movie isn’t ever going to happen. In any case, he goes on to mention their work on Bad Santa and This is Us and how that influenced their approach…
“It was sort of like, we wrote ‘Bad Santa’ a couple of years ago, and it was that sensibility mixed with our ‘This Is Us’ sensibility. We kind of meshed them together. We were doing a relationship movie but with the sensibility of a ‘Bad Santa,’ f***ed up, mentally deranged people. It was a lot of fun.”
More to my earlier point, when asked Requa and Ficarra don’t sound like they know when the movie will get a green light. My guess is “never”, but we shall see…
“I don’t know where it is on the queue of DC movies,” Requa insisted. “We handed the script in and everybody loved it, but I don’t know when they are going to do it,” added Ficarra.
