Playing The Joker is one of those superhero movie roles you can’t half-ass. Ever since Heath Ledger turned in a fairly iconic performance in 2008’s The Dark Knight (and then died) it has become one of those roles which carries a certain mystique: the sense that its a deep, challenging role which forces an actor to contend with his own sanity. Oh, and then Jared Leto played him and it sucked extremely hard.
As you might recall, there’s a standalone Joker movie in the works over at Warner Bros, and the current raft of DC films don’t augur any confidence that they might be any good. It’s separate to Suicide Squad, though, so I guess there’s that silver lining. Who will be playing The Joker? Apparently, it could be Joaquin Phoenix.
Variety has confirmed that though no actual negotiations are yet underway, Phoenix is the top pick to play the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips‘ new movie.
Insiders stressed that Leto is still The Joker in the core DC films – which are still chugging along despite the fairly shitty box office performance of Justice League – and that this new Joker movie will be released under a new banner which will seek to explore different and interesting stories about DC’s core characters.
Unconfirmed rumours circulated a couple of months ago saying that Leonardo DiCaprio was the first person approached to take on the Joker role, which would have been incredibly strange and possibly quite good.
It’s believed that this Joker film will take place in the 1980s, and will take the form of a gritty crime drama more than a superhero film. It’s unsurprisingly that DC are making that pivot – part of what made the Dark Knight trilogy so successful was its willingness to lean on classic noir and hardboiled crime conventions rather than regular superhero cliché.
We’ll see if Phoenix’s brand of ‘brooding dude with dark, bizarre underside’ will translate to the Joker, or if he’ll drop the project altogether and make a weird documentary instead.
