Joaquin Phoenix as the new Clown Prince of Crime? Unlikely, it seems.
With each day that passes, it’s looking increasingly likely that Phoenix won’t be involved in that standalone Joker movie whatsoever, after admitting that he knows “absolutely nothing” about the DC project that currently has Todd Phillips attached to direct.
Word is it’ll portray Batman’s arch-nemesis as a failed comedian in the 1980s, leading many to conclude that it’ll take place outside the DCEU and its established continuity. Still no word of an official confirmation on that front, but when it comes to the potential involvement of Phoenix, don’t hold your breath, after the decorated actor told Collider that, “I don’t know really. I don’t know.”
Joaquin Phoenix did offer his own thoughts about the sense of pressure and heightened expectations currently surrounding The Joker though, particularly after Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and Heath Ledger’s frankly unforgettable performance as Gotham’s Clown Prince.
I don’t know about that movie or character specifically, but I was thinking about it’s interesting with comics there’s different writers and artists that come on. It’s different than this character from literature being uniquely that. There are different interpretations. It’s so interesting; I was just thinking about it today, it seems so unique in some ways to comic books. I think there’s probably room for that.
Maybe it’s like doing a play, like you always hear about people doing something, ‘You should have seen this actor in this performance,’ but then other actors do it and it’s a different kind of film. I think that genre, comic books, kind of lends itself to having different people play the same character and interpret it in a different way. It’s kind of built into the source material in some ways. I think it’s cool when people do that.
Much like Nightwing before it, we’re more inclined to believe that Warner Bros. is holding fire until such a time as Matt Reeves is ready to launch his standalone Batman movie. The takeaway? Phillips’ Joker movie likely won’t be ready until 2021, if it’s ever ready at all.
