After approximately six weeks and an incredibly rocky debut in cinemas & theatres in domestic and selected international territories, it's fair to say that Todd Phillips 'Joker' has had an incredible journey so far, dominating the box office every week since release, already becoming the highest earning R-Rated movie...ever! Currently standing at a grand total of $1,018,729,655 worldwide. As well as earning the title of highest earning R-Rated movie, Joker has also taken the title of being the first R-Rated movie to break $1 Billion at the box office and the most profitable comic book movie of all time, raking in a humongous $950 million in profits against its minuscule $65 million budget.
So a sequel was always going to be inevitable. Not really.
Both director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix have both been extremely vocal about how Joker was always a "one off" and wouldn't become any kind of franchise but money talks and a small budget movie with an iconic character like the crown prince breaking a billion has surely given Warner Bros and Todd Phillips the confidence to return to the story of Arthur Fleck, giving fans in turn another opportunity to see Joaquin Phoenix put on a happy face once more. Its no secret that there's been a few bumps in the road for Warner Bros and DC Comics in recent years with the ultimate failure of movies such as Batman v Superman and 2017's Justice League (more on that in another blog post - coming shortly) but it seems like exploring existing DC rogues in an R-Rated character study format and Todd Phillips is said to now be working on another origin movie as well as returning to directorial duties on Joker's sequel. So could this potentially be setting up an R-Rated universe under the DC label?
After watching and digesting Joker last month, i began to hypothesise about the potential for Joker setting up a new movie universe for Warner Bros under the DC Black Label banner that focuses on gritty, dark subject matter origin stories for some famous and lesser known rogues from across the DC Universe that share subtle synchronicity by existing in the same universe but set during different periods and referencing anything significant from other movies. Now that we know that at least one other character is set to be adapted by Todd Phillips, it may not be a far stretch to suggest that DC and Warner Bros could well be gearing up for the development of a new franchise for the big screen under the vision of Todd Phillips and fellow Joker screenwriter, Scott Silver. There's plenty of characters that i think fans would love to see given the Joker style treatment on the big screen and if the Joker sequel and the other Todd Phillips DC project can bring in the kind of budget to profit ratio's that Joker itself has, you can bet we'll be seeing more of these characters having their origin stories given a dark adaptation.
I'll take a Reverse Flash movie with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Eobard Thawne at your earliest convenience, Mr Phillips.
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