This October, DC’s going to do something revolutionary in our age of shared universes: they’ll release a standalone superhero movie. Todd Phillips’ Joker won’t connect to the established DCEU and takes place in its own world. The move has paid off well so far, too, with the buzz around the pic mostly positive. It’s also apparently enough to convince Marvel to look at doing something similar themselves.
At least, that’s according to what we’ve heard here at We Got This Covered. A source tells us that Marvel Studios is thinking of making what you might call Joker-type films in the future, meaning movies that won’t directly tie into the MCU. This would be a big change for the studio, who’ve cultivated a vast, ever-growing cohesive franchise over the past ten years. However, Avengers: Endgame may have given them a way to have their cake and eat it, too.
Our intel tells us that these Joker-esque productions will be set in those different timelines featured in the recent sequel. Endgame was very specific about how each change to history would result in a splintered timeline that had no effect on the prime universe, so these parallel worlds would be the perfect place to set a standalone story that Marvel wanted to keep separate.
The only thing that would differentiate these from DC’s Joker is that the other Marvel timelines would still take place in something recognizably like the MCU, just with a few changes. Whereas Joker appears to be its own completely standalone world where DCEU characters can be recast. If Marvel wished to do this, they’d have to play around with the Multiverse of different Earths out there. Which, to be fair, they may be planning on doing, if we’re to believe Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far From Home.Â
We’ll keep you updated as we hear more about this, but it sure seems like the shape and structure of the Marvel franchise could be about to change in major ways.
