Empire Debuts New Joker Photos As The Clown Meets Murray Franklin

With Spider-Man: Far From Home‘s opening weekend now behind us, there remains one more major comic book movie to drop in 2019 – and that’s Joker. Set to star Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character, it’ll bring us a never-before-seen exploration of the iconic villain’s origin story.

In fact, director Todd Phillips recently admitted that he thinks some diehard fans may be upset with the final product, as it’s not adhering to any sort of comic book lore. Then again, anyone who’s been following production to this point knew to expect deviation. In other words, we won’t be witness to “one bad day,” but rather, it’ll document a man’s gradual descent into madness compounded with an affinity for theatrics.

Now that we have less than three months to go until Joker storms cinemas, more details will gradually be brought to light. Positioning itself as the vanguard is that of Empire, who are rolling out an exclusive cover story focusing on the highly anticipated film. And as one would expect, new photos are part of the package. Just the other day, one cover found its way online, with another available for viewing pleasure in the gallery below.

If you click over to the next slide, you’ll see Robert De Niro being confronted by the Clown Prince of Crime himself. In case you hadn’t heard, the legendary actor is playing talk show host Murray Franklin, and adds definite credibility to the picture by lending his talent.

According to Phillips, a strong screenplay was key to securing De Niro as part of the cast:

“Bob really loved the script. I met with him and said, ‘I’d be lying to you if I said we weren’t influenced by a lot of your movies.’ I talked with him about Taxi Driver and about The King Of Comedy, which is one of my favourite movies of all time.”

Whether Joker lives up to those other movies will be revealed once it arrives in theaters on October 4th. But when you consider how Warner Bros. are said to be plotting an Oscar campaign, it’s looking more and more like we’re in for one hell of a treat.