Fans of Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck/Joker shouldn’t get their hopes up for Joker 3. In a new Variety cover story, Joker: Folie à Deux director Todd Phillips effectively ended any speculation of another sequel.
“It was fun to play in this sort of sandbox for two movies, but I think we’ve said what we wanted to say in this world,” Phillips shared. Instead, he would like to go back to making comedy movies.
Sharing his belief that “people really want comedies right now,” Phillips explained, “The trailer for Joker 2 sort of sums things up when it says, ‘What the world needs now is love.’ But I would go farther: We could use a good laugh, too.”
However, this doesn’t automatically mean Phillips is cutting off his partnership with Phoenix. The filmmaker admitted, “I’d love to keep working with Joaquin but on a comedy, because he can be so loose and funny.”
For those unfamiliar with Phillips’ filmography, he cut his teeth with early aughts comedies like Road Trip and Old School before helming The Hangover series.
As for what to expect from Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix revealed in their own interviews for the cover story that they sang live on the set to “let the emotion guide” their performances.
“It was important to me that we never perform the songs as one typically does in a musical,” Phoenix said. “We didn’t want vibrato and perfect notes.” Gaga added, “Neither Arthur nor Lee are professional singers and they shouldn’t sound like they are (unless perhaps a fantasy). We wanted to help tell the story of their shared madness in a way that felt real.”
Joker: Folie à Deux will strut into theaters on October 4th. Revisit the official trailer here.