It was surprising when Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix made a sequel to their Oscar-winning Joker movie. But don’t expect there to be a trilogy.
Speaking at the Los Angeles premiere for Joker: Folie à Deux to The Hollywood Reporter, Phillips made it pretty clear that a Joker 3 is not coming — at least not from him. Asked whether he had any plans to spin off Lady Gaga’s version of Harley Quinn from Folie à Deux into her own film — as DC Studios did a few years ago when they gave Margot Robbie a Birds of Prey movie to headline after Suicide Squad — Phillips replied, “It’s not really where this movie is headed for me. I feel like my time in the DC Universe was these two films.”
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Phoenix won an Oscar for the first Joker, which was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and grossed over $1 billion, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history to that time. Tellingly, Phoenix and Phillips were both open about their interest in making a sequel from the beginning. It was just a matter of figuring out what story to tell and how to tell it. (At one point, Phoenix was reportedly interested in doing a Joker on Broadway.)
Phillips and Phoenix eventually moved away from the idea of a Broadway show — but they maintained the concept of a musical, which became the basis for the second film, and a big reason to bring in Gaga to play the role of Harley Quinn in the film. Whether that’s a gamble that pays off remains to be seen. Early tracking numbers for the sequel predict it will open to significantly smaller box office than the first Joker.
Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters this weekend.
Oscar Best Picture Winners That Got Sequels
These big awards winners were popular enough to get their own sequels. Some of those sequels were hits. Others were not.