In general, it’s true that you don’t bring someone like Joaquin Phoenix into a movie like Joker with a plan of only using him once. That is, of course, unless it means not having him at all. When Todd Phillips cast Phoenix to play the Clown Prince of Crime there was some question whether he’d be sticking around, possibly to fit in as part of the larger DCEU. But if there’s one thing that we know from the Golden Lion award-winning Joker it’s that it doesn’t really fit into a traditional superhero universe.
So it comes as no shock that when Variety asked Phillips whether Phoenix’s version of the Joker would be showing up again in a Batman movie, the answer was negative…
“No, definitely not,” he answered.
So much for that. That doesn’t mean the Joker is going to go away, though. It just won’t be the one Phillips and Phoenix created together…
“Oddly, in the states, comic books are our Shakespeare it seems, and you can do many many versions of ‘Hamlet.’ There will be many more jokers, I’m sure, in the future.”
Not only will fans not like that answer, but you can bet the suits at Warner Bros. are wishing Phillips was a little more ambiguous. At least tease it out as a possibility we might see Phoenix and Robert Pattinson’s Batman square off someday. But no, WB will have to find some other way to tap into what could be Joker-mania after the film opens on October 4th. Is Jared Leto sitting by the phone?
