Director Todd Phillips Disputes Report on ‘Joker 2’ and DC Movies

Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter dropped news that a sequel to Todd Phillips’ box-office smash Joker was “in the works.” As it turns out, that's not entirely true. In a recent interview with Indiewire, Phillips insists that the meeting on October 7 where a sequel was allegedly discussed never even happened:

Here’s the real truth about a sequel. While Joaquin and I have talked about it, and while touring the world with Warner Bros executives — going to Toronto, and Venice, and other places — of course, we’re sitting at dinner and they’re saying, ‘So, have you thought about…?’ But, talking about contracts, there’s not a contract for us to even write a sequel, we’ve never approached Joaquin to be in a sequel. Will that happen? Again, I just think the article was anticipatory at best.

So what exactly does all this mean? It means that it will be quite some time before a serious conversation with Warner Bros. about a sequel is ready to take place. Phillips originally pitched Joker as part of a “DC Black Label” — based on the publishing imprint of the same name — that would feature multiple characters' gritty origin stories, but the idea was shot down.

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None of this means a sequel will never happen. In fact, Joaquin Phoenix fashioned his own mock Joker sequel posters to show Todd Phillips he was serious about continuing his role. "A movie doesn’t make a billion dollars and they don’t talk about a sequel,” Phillips said to IndieWire. That's all for now, folks.

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