Surely Warner Bros.’s marketing team is remembering something William Shakespeare once wrote: “let’s kill all the lawyers.” The Hollywood Reporter published an article on Wednesday listing the top 100 entertainment attorneys. At number 14 on the alphabetical roster is Warren Dern from the firm of Sloane Offer Weber & Dern. While kvelling about his high profile clients like Zack Snyder, Amy Poehler, J.A. Bayona, and Paul Feig, he also let it slip that Todd Phillips has “struck a deal to co-write the next Joker installment.”
The only issue is that the studio has yet to actually confirm this long-rumored sequel was actually happening.
Then again, disruption, even if just about the stage management of motion picture releases, seems in keeping with the chaotic nature of the Clown Prince of Crime. One can almost hear Joaquin Phoenix‘s uncontrolled laughter as publicists scurry to catch up with this slip. (The studio has still yet to officially comment.)
Not that a sequel is much of a surprise. 2019’s Joker grossed $1.07 billion globally, joining a club with only 46 other members. The villain origin story also secured Joaquin Phoenix the Academy Award for best actor, plus a Golden Globe, a Critic’s Choice Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Joker also won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for 11 Oscars. (A second win went to Hildur Guðnadóttir for her original score.)
Warren Dern’s comment doesn’t say if Phillips will be directing or who his collaborator will be on the Gotham-set sequel. The first picture was co-written with Scott Smith, whose other credits include 8 Mile and The Fighter. Dern did, however, say that he can’t wait to get back to power lunches as the Century City Mall, and that if he were to invest in an NFT it would be “one of the basketball ones.”
In November 2019 some outlets reported that a Joker sequel deal was sealed, but Todd Phillips quickly said that those announcements had “jumped the gun” and that, at the time, there was nothing specific in the works, though he admitted that he and Phoenix had “been talking about a sequel since week two of shooting because it’s a fun thing to talk about.”
One big question remains. If a Joker sequel comes, what neighborhood will be besieged by tourists looking to take selfies?
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