Dust has at last started to settle on Joker, with its cinematic run now weeks past and a home video release out well in time for the holidays (doubtless it found its way under many a tree this Winter). Its positive audience response and rampant commercial success has hardly gone unnoticed, either, least of all by the movie’s key players.
Talk has quickly moved to when a sequel will come out, not if. But director Todd Phillips remains coy on the matter as Joker had initially been intended as a standalone project, and his toing and froing as to the chances of a Joker 2 are evidence of that (he might also be teasing. I’m ruling nothing out).
In any case, speaking with Deadline, Phillips acknowledged the expectation that Joker’s enormous profitability has placed on a sequel’s development. And though no decision has yet been made, he and Joaquin Phoenix still remain open to returning:
“When a movie does $1 billion and cost $60 million to make, of course it comes up,” he laughed. “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.”
This latest soundbite ought to warm the hearts of those keen to see the Phillips/Phoenix Joker story expanded. Phillips indicates he won’t be immediately pressured into spinning out sequels just because of the money involved, while also making that clear further films are still on the table.
If I were a betting man, I’d wager Joker 2 is a certainty to happen. Films that make that kind of money, comic book films no less, don’t go away with a sole outing in the can. That doesn’t mean to say a follow-up is going to arrive in the near future though, as this doesn’t feel in the same vein as a Marvel movie, with franchise-building sequels pumped out with industrial efficiency. Rather, the next Joker film might take a little longer to arrive, but longer is all it’ll be.