The Suicide Squad Star Addresses If Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker Will Cameo

The success of Joker has led to talk of sequels and Joaquin Phoenix’s character turning up in the future Robert Pattinson Batman films. With Jared Leto’s time as the Joker reportedly over, there’s a Clown Prince of Crime-shaped gap for James Gunn’s upcoming The Suicide Squad and although we don’t know yet whether the Joker will have a part to play in the pic, actor Joel Kinnaman thinks adding Phoenix would be a great idea.

Kinnaman, who’s reprising his role as Rick Flag from Suicide Squad, was asked by Variety‘s The Big Ticket podcast about whether Phoenix could work in Gunn’s movie, and had this to say:

“That would be incredible. I doubt it, I doubt it, but I mean that would be fun.”

The actor also had praise for Phoenix’s performance, commenting as so:

“I thought it was fantastic. It was fantastic. I mean, Joaquin just crushed it. Wow. He is incredible. He is such an actor. It’s surprising to see that kind of performance in something that has a DC wrapper because you know that’s a real art film.”

In the same interview, Kinnaman described The Suicide Squad as having a more comedic tone than the previous outing for the DC anti-heroes and villains, to which the Joker could conceivably have a part to play. However, Gunn has also recently explained that the Joker isn’t needed to make his take on the Suicide Squad work, as the character isn’t actually part of the Squad in the comics, and is only related to the action via Harley Quinn.

Of course, things could still change, particularly given the popularity of Phoenix’s Joker, and the release date for The Suicide Squad set a few years away on August 6th, 2021. Gunn has claimed Warner Bros. and DC have given him a free rein over the project, though, so it’s probably unlikely that they’ll try to retrofit Phoenix’s Joker into a production that’s already started shooting.

Outside of The Suicide Squad, we’ve heard that Joker 2 is already in early development, and will jump forward in time to show more of Arthur Fleck’s rise to becoming a master criminal. In the meantime, we may be getting another Joker to replace Leto, possibly for an apparently still-in-the-works Joker and Harley Quinn movie. If all goes to plan, we think it more likely that this Joker could have a cameo in The Suicide Squad to maintain DCEU consistency, although we wouldn’t rule out a Phoenix crossover just yet, either.