Joaquin Phoenix Ready for Joker 2:
In terms of profitability, Joker really was the biggest film of the year. Production and marketing costs included, Joker incurred a total cost of $120 Million. And it almost made 9 times the money. If you consider just the production budget, then the money multiplier goes over 17.5x. Given the amount of money WB has made with Joker (over $500 Million in pure profits), they’d definitely want to do a sequel, even if it isn’t as big as its predecessor. Joker 2 will definitely happen. The only question is that “When will director Todd Phillips & Joaquin Phoenix return to make the movie?”
WB has a packed schedule for DC films till 2022. 2020 begins with Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) in February. Following that we have Wonder Woman 1984 in June. Then comes the next year which will have a rather late beginning as Matt Reeves’ The Batman arrives in June. Following that we have The Suicide Squad & Black Adam in August and December respectively. In 2022, Shazam! 2 comes out in April. The Flash will hit the theatres in July and Aquaman 2 will release in December.
So, we can be sure that a Joker sequel isn’t happening in the next 3 years. It will have to be in 2023, if not later. And that actually is a good thing. At times, WB & Sony act similarly. The moment one of their films become a massive hit, they rush a sequel into production. WB did this with It: Chapter 2 and the film suffered. They understood that they should allow Wonder Woman 1984 the time it needs and so the film was pushed to 2020. They’ve placed a 4-year gap between Aquaman 1 & 2, and that’s the best thing. Now, we can expect the same for Joker 2 as well.
Director Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix are both open to returning for the sequel. But what’s great is that both of them want to get the story right in order to go through with it. Recently while speaking to Deadline, Phillips expressed that he definitely wants to move forward for a sequel starring Joaquin Phoenix. He said:
“When a movie does $1 billion and cost $60 million to make, of course it comes up. But Joaquin and I haven’t really decided on it. We’re open. I mean, I’d love to work with him on anything, quite frankly. So who knows? But it would have to have a real thematic resonance the way this one did, ultimately being about childhood trauma and the lack of love, and the loss of empathy. All those things are really what made this movie work for us, so we’d have to have something that had an equal thematic resonance.”
As we’ve deciphered, Phillips and Phoenix have at least 3 years’ worth of time to return with a great continuation story. We know that Phillips wants to build a whole Universe of DC villains, so Joker 2 could actually allow some more villains to be added. This way even more spinoffs for characters like Two-Face & even Lex Luthor could be made. Todd Phillips previously spoke about the sequel with IndieWire. He said:
“Here’s the real truth about a sequel. 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.”
Let’s hope that we will get a sequel for the film as soon as 2023 because let’s be honest, Joker could give us his own twisted trilogy.
