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Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga as the clown prince of crime and Harley Quinn, is inching ever closer to its theatrical release. While its stars are still coming to terms with whether their musical sequel is in fact a musical, Phoenix is harboring reservations over whether he and director Todd Phillips have it in them to make it a trilogy.
In a recent interview with IGN, Phillips and screenwriter Scott Silver reflected on how Joker 2 came together. As Phillips recalls, he and Phoenix fell in love with what they created with Arthur Fleck and quickly began joking about where the character’s misadventures could continue around the 30-day mark of the first film’s 55-day shoot. As IGN notes, Phoenix is generally opposed to making sequels, so making Joker 2 came with its fair share of caveats.
“There was no way Joaquin was going to do anything with the number two after it, even if you say ‘à Deux,’ unless it was an entirely different and risky [thing] and sort of swinging for the fences. So that kind of led the charge,” Phillips told IGN. “I mean, we weren’t going to go and just write an expected sequel. Oh, that guy who’s standing on the cop car is now running a crime syndicate in Gotham. Not only would I not really necessarily have that interest, but there’s no way Joaquin’s making that movie because he knows that wasn’t really Arthur Fleck, the Arthur Fleck that we all created.”
“He literally said to me, ‘I’m not going to do this unless I’m as scared as I was on the first one.’ He was petrified on the first movie the way you want an actor to be,” Phillips continued. “We kind of wrote a script that would sort of give him that feeling.”
Somewhere along their back-and-forth over Joker 2, Phillips recounted Phoenix suggesting they “do this on Broadway or something.”
“He had this vision, and again, 50 to 80% of it was us just fucking around joking. And that’s sort of the creative process. And then I’ll call Scott and go, ‘What do you think about that?’ And we just bounce around ideas. That’s just sort of how everybody works,” Phillips said.
Critics have mixed feelings about whether Phillip’s sophomore effort with Phoenix’s Joker was worth all the effort. One review went so far as to say the film committed the cardinal sin of wasting Lady Gaga’s talents. When asked at Joker 2‘s official Venice press conference whether it was in the cards to make a third Joker film, Phillips left things up in the air.
“I don’t want to speak for Joaquin, but for me, the story of Arthur/Joker has been told,” Phillips said, according to Vulture. “I can’t say yes or no, but it’s not necessarily my goal to stay in this space.”
Should the fear of disappointing critics and audiences not be enough to push Phoenix’s love of Arthur into venturing into a third Joker film, Phillips could always go the nuclear route of dangling a gay romance storyline over his head. If you know, you know.
Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on October 4th.
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