Dun Dun Da-Dun, Hey! There’s Gonna Be a "Joker" Sequel

Start ringing those death bells.

When director Todd Phillips first pitched a dark and deranged film based on the DC villain Joker, he did so intending for it to be a standalone feature. That gave him the freedom to give it a grim finale.

But now that Joker has earned more than a billion dollars worldwide, off a $US55 million budget, he’s had a change of heart.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Phillips is in talks with Warner Bros. to return as director for a second Joker instalment, which will be penned by Phillips and the original’s co-writer Scott Silver.

Warner Bros. already has "sequel options" in place for star Joaquin Phoenix (meaning he’s basically locked in for any sequels they want to make, so they won’t need to renegotiate his contract). And though Phoenix probably only signed on thinking this would be a one-and-done type of deal, all the Oscar buzz he’s generating as Arthur Fleck will maybe help him feel that this is more of an artistic endeavour than a purely financial one.

In an interesting addition to THR’s story, Phillips went to Warner Bros. immediately after Joker’s huge opening weekend at the box office asking for the rights to different DC characters, hoping to give them all their very own extremely depressing origin stories. However, he apparently only walked out with the rights to "at least one other DC story", so perhaps we’ll see some other Batman nemesis in Arthur’s future.

Just don’t expect it to be Catwoman, Riddler or The Penguin, who are set to be played by Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano and Colin Farrell respectively in Matt Reeves’ upcoming The Batman, or anyone from Wonder Woman, as Warner Bros. is expected to keep those properties separate.

But if Phillips is looking for a pitch for Joker 2, we actually have one ready to go.

Update (22/11): Well, Todd Phillips is now out here telling Indiewire there's no contract for him to even write a Joker sequel, and that the reporter at THR "jumped the gun". He even says the meeting described above never took place.

"While Joaquin and I have talked about it, and while touring the world with Warner Bros executives—going to Toronto, and Venice, and other places—of course, we’re sitting at dinner and they’re saying, 'So, have you thought about…?' But, talking about contracts, there’s not a contract for us to even write a sequel, we’ve never approached Joaquin to be in a sequel. Will that happen? Again, I just think the article was anticipatory at best."

Still, a billion dollars is a lot of money. Just saying...

Header Image: Warner Bros.