The original Joker movie wasn’t originally envisioned as a film that would get a sequel. But since it made $1.079 billion worldwide, a follow-up was inevitable. Joker: Folie à Deux is going to hit theaters later this year, but if Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips followed their initial instincts, the Joker sequel could have gone to Broadway.
While speaking with Variety, Phoenix recalled a vivid dream he had during the production of the original film. In Phoenix’s vision, he saw himself as Arthur Fleck in full Joker makeup entertaining a crowded theater by telling jokes and singing.
“I woke up feeling elated and called [Phillips], hoping he’d want to do a show with me,” said Phoenix. Phillips was up for the idea, but the logistics of putting on a production like that kept it from becoming a reality.
“When we started really thinking about it, we realized it takes four years to put something like that together,” said Phillips. “And is Joaquin really going to give six months of his life to do that every night onstage? Then we thought about doing it at the Carlyle as sort of a smaller thing. But COVID hit.”
Regardless, the initial idea behind the Broadway show led to Joker: Folie à Deux, which features Phoenix’s title character dancing and singing with Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn instead of doing the usual Joker things like fighting Batman. But before they settled on introducing Harley, they considered introducing “a female Joker, who could serve as a dance partner in a kind of psychotic tango.” In place of that idea, Phillips says that they went with a more grounded take on Harley.
“The high voice, that accent, the gum-chewing and all that sort of sassy stuff that’s in the comics, we stripped that away,” noted Phillips. “We wanted her to fit into this world of Gotham that we created from the first movie.”
Phillips recently congratulated Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy after Deadpool & Wolverine surpassed Joker to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all-time. However, Joker: Folie à Deux will get a chance to reclaim that record when it arrives in theaters on October 4.
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