Warner Bros.Warner Bros. and DC Comics have officially confirmed they’re working on a solo Joker film with Jared Leto set to continue his tenure as The Clown Prince of Crime.
The Oscar-winning actor first debuted as The Joker in the poorly received Suicide Squad, which came out in 2016.
It wasn’t that Suicide Squad was terrible, it was just very forgettable – which is a long-winded way of saying it was indeed terrible.
In fact, if an announcement hadn’t been made for a Joker solo film, I would’ve completely forgotten the 30 Seconds to Mars frontman played the part – or how Suicide Squad even existed.
However, instead of cutting their losses and retconning the disappointing DCEU franchise, Warner Bros. are sticking to their guns and hoping they can rectify mistakes of their past films.
Margot Robbie, who played Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad will be starring in her own solo spin-off, dubbed Birds of Prey, with their next goal to produce a Joker film.
According to Variety, last year in Autumn, a Joker spin-off was in the works, with Todd Phillips (best known for The Hangover trilogy) poised to be in the director’s seat.
Warner BrosThe original idea was to make the solo feature separate from the current DCEU, which would allow multiple actors the opportunity to don the face paint of the iconic villain. At one point Joaquin Phoenix was tapped to play The Joker.
Fans of Leto noted his role in 2016’s Suicide Squad was nothing more than a ‘glorified cameo’, despite this – and an obvious bad taste it left in the mouths of fans, as well as Leto himself – he stated his keenness to keep playing the role in future films and expand of the character in a more fleshed-out – if not, starring – role.
A start date for the untitled Joker project’s filming has not been confirmed. For now, Leto and Warner Bros. will focus on searching for a writer to pen a script worthy of one of comics’ best – if not the best – villains to ever grace the panels.
Furthermore, it’s unclear where this Joker film will take place in the DCEU timeline.
Warner Bros.Upon its release in 2016, critics and fans alike slammed the film for its disjointed plot, poorly developed characters, and David Ayer’s turbulent directing.
In a review for AV Club Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote:
Like so many of Ayer’s directorial efforts, Suicide Squad feels like it was re-drafted in the editing room. It’s clumsy, disrupted by at least eight different plodding flashbacks, filled with lines of dialogue that cut well into trailers but make zero sense in context, and patched up with an embarrassment of rock-along musical cues.
(Putting “Fortunate Son,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Sympathy For The Devil,” and “Spirit In The Sky” in the same movie has to count for some kind of record.) In other words, it’s an exercise in attitude over everything else.
Even the idea of nihilist camaraderie, which should come naturally with the Peckinpah-by-way-of-post-Crisis-DC premise, feels like a load of hooey; the characters are often too busy posing to exchange more than a few words at a time.
Warner Bros.Let’s hope this Joker solo film does better than Suicide Squad eh?
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