Todd Phillips’ Joker may have become the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever made, one of the defining titles of last year and an awards season favorite, but it was never designed with franchise potential in mind. If anything, the opposite was true, with Warner Bros. so skeptical that it would be a success that they ended up losing out on a huge share of the profits after co-financing the project with several other companies.
That being said, now that The Flash is set to introduce the multiverse into the DCEU, Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is technically a part of canon, just in a different reality. Not only that, but almost as soon as the credits faded to black, theories were making their way online that he wasn’t even the real Joker, and the genuine Clown Prince of Crime would appear somewhere else down the road.
The Academy Award winner has reportedly been offered $50 million to reprise the role for two sequels, and we’re now hearing from our sources – the same ones that told us Ben Affleck would be returning as Batman in The Flash a month before it was officially confirmed – that the studio are keen on the idea of introducing multiple Jokers into the mix, and they want Jim Carrey to play one of them.
According to our intel, the plan is to establish that Arthur is just the inspiration for Mr. J, not the man himself that will go on to become Batman’s archenemy. In the sequels, we’ll see different characters spanning several generations that have taken on the mantle after the troubled figure became an unlikely icon, and the 58 year-old Carrey is being eyed for an older version of the villain. He wouldn’t be the real Joker, mind you, just someone else inspired by Arthur.
Of course, the Batman Forever star has proven himself as a fantastic dramatic actor with the right material, and if he balanced both sides of his onscreen persona, then he could do something truly phenomenal with the role should he end up signing on.
