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Join Telegram Channel“You can put the Joker in any sauce,” Joaquin Phoenix confided in Première in 2019. He confirms this today to Empire.
How surprised we were when Joker: Madness for Two has been confirmed as a musical! Finally, “musical jukebox”or rather, to use the words of its creators Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Because five years ago, when it came time to introduce Joker to the public, the interpreter of Arthur Fleck had explained in First how his character was adaptable to all cinematographic genres:
First: Yes Joker is a success, they're going to want you to come back for a second film, then a third… Are you ready?
Joaquin Phoenix: It depends on the audience. I'm not too worried about it because I think the character's power of fascination is endless. He can thrive in a lot of different environments. A sequel usually tries to replicate what worked in the first film, but with Joker, you could go absolutely anywhere. To celebrate the end of filming, I took twenty classics from the history of cinema, Photoshopped the Joker's picture onto each one, and gave it to Todd. Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather, Singin' in the Rain… It was a way of saying: you can put the Joker in everything. In a musical, anywhere, there is something to do. You can take him everywhere.
Joker 2: The Musical ?
(Laughs) Why not?
Joaquin Phoenix: “The Joker's power of fascination is endless”
On the cover of the new issue ofEmpirePhoenix once again tells this story of cult film posters retouched to show Batman's sworn enemy, then he has fun with the screenwriter and director.
“It's true that we were always talking about shooting a new one while we were preparing the first one. Joker, said first Phillips. Because we love this character so much. We were even downright obsessed with Arthur. We would joke around like: 'Oh, we could take Arthur and do this or that?'“
“Yes, I was curious about him, I wanted to go further with this character, confirms Phoenix. I felt like you could put him in any situation and it would be interesting to see how he would cope. I had fun making these montages based on these famous films: Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather...I would put the Joker in the middle and give it to Todd. We even had this running joke: 'What if we sent Joker into space?' So yeah, we were fascinated by everything he could potentially do.”
Phillips then talks about the challenge of shooting a sequel that won't quite have the same atmosphere as the film that was so successful in 2019 – remember that the first Joker is a billionaire at the box office, quite an achievement for an R-rated film. Concerned about the public's reaction to this different proposition, he concludes: “It's not a direct sequel, no. And that's what makes this project so exciting to us.”
Joker: Madness for Two will be presented at the Venice Film Festival and will then be released in theaters in early October. Here is its trailer:
Joker: Folie à Deux – Why Arthur Fleck Will Never Be Gotham's Prince of Crime