The lifting of the Shazam! review embargo – read the Empire verdict here – wasn’t the only thing to happen in the DC comics sphere this weekend. Filmmaker Todd Phillips is currently hard at work on his standalone Joker movie, as far as we know it simply titled Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a failed stand-up comedian who becomes the Batman-centric lunatic foe we all know from the comics. According to the director, the project is currently in the editing stage – he shared a new photo of Phoenix in character as ‘Arthur Fleck’ on his Instagram, along with the short caption “Editing”.
That all tracks – Joker is set for an early October release, meaning the film is only about six months away from hitting the big screen. The shoot wrapped in December, and the talk around the film positions it as a gritty, character-focused psychological drama. It doesn’t sound like this one will need the VFX-focused extended post-production that the majority of comic book movies build in prior to release.
Alongside Phoenix, Joker will star Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond, Brett Cullen as Thomas ‘father of Bruce’ Wayne, Dante Pereira-Olson as Bruce ‘son of Thomas’ Wayne, Bill Camp as an unnamed Gotham City PD cop, and Robert De Niro as talk show host Murray Franklin, among other. The script was written by Phillips and Scott Silver, and is said to have taken influence from Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy – and it seems to be largely unconnected to the rest of the recent DC output. As production continues, expect to see more from Joker hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
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