Today’s interview with DC Creative Officer Geoff Johns and DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson explained that, post-Justice League, Warner Bros. is planning to de-emphasize the shared universe across their films. Now, we know a little bit more as to how it’ll be structured.
You’ll still have movies that are technically within the same universe, but we probably won’t be seeing events in one film influencing another. On top of that, there’ll be a separate line of pics with no connection to the DCEU whatsoever – like the upcoming Joker project.
Perhaps the most intriguing prospect on the DC radar, the film has The Hangover director Todd Phillips attached to co-write and helm, with none other than Martin-freakin-Scorsese apparently in talks to produce. Not only that, but it’s been said that Warner Bros. is targeting Leonardo DiCaprio to play the title role. We’ll see how much of that actually comes together, but if the studio pull this off and rope the latter two into a Joker movie, they’ve got something very special on the cards.
Of course, this currently means there are no less than three separate Joker projects in development. The first is the aforementioned Phillips/Scorsese origin story, then we have a Suicide Squad sequel featuring Jared Leto’s Joker (apparently WB execs are enthused by him getting a ‘huge’ number of social media mentions), and finally, a Joker vs. Harley Quinn film.
I’d bet that one or more of those will end up cancelled, but I seriously hope it’s not the Scorsese one. The notion of Warner Bros. creating a space for idiosyncratic directors to pretty much do whatever the hell they want with the characters without having to worry about wider continuity is extremely exciting. Maybe we’ll finally get to see Darren Aronofsky’s take on Batman?
Time will tell, but for now, it certainly looks like The Joker has a very bright future on the big screen.
