“Joker: Folie à Deux” wouldn’t have happened without Joaquin Phoenix. That’s one of the main points director Todd Phillips seemed to want audiences to take away at a press Q&A attended by /Film’s Bill Bria (who loved the movie, by the way) ahead of the sequel’s theatrical release. In fact, Phillips told listeners, the seed of an idea for a follow up was already planted mid-way through the first film’s production, when it became clear just how much Phoenix and Phillips cared about the Arthur Fleck character.
“I’ll tell you, it was very motivated by Joaquin, as crazy as that sounds,” Phillips revealed. “Because you all have probably interviewed and know Joaquin and know that he’s not a sequel guy, necessarily.” Phillips added that (despite the “Hangover” trilogy) he isn’t much for sequels as well, as he’s typically more than ready to be done with a movie by the time production ends. “Normally, when a movie’s done, any movie, from ‘The Hangover’ to ‘Old School’ to any movie I’ve ever done, the last day, last two days, you’re just kind of happy it’s over,” the filmmaker explained.
Joker was the first movie shoot Phillips didn’t want to end
But “Joker” was different. Phillips cited a photo he posted to Instagram as one clue that this project was going to be different. “I posted a picture from the last day of the first ‘Joker’ many years ago, and Joaquin was hugging me with tears in his eyes, and that’s not normal for the end of a movie, and that’s not because he wasn’t going to see me again,” Phillips said. “That was really because we kind of fell in love with Arthur and we thought there was more to tell in Arthur’s journey.” Phillips says the actor used to joke that the first movie “could’ve shot for three more months,” and it was a sentiment the director agreed with.
Of course, plenty of sequels exist just because the cast and filmmakers fell in love with a character and wanted to tell more of their story. But Phillips’ situation is unique here because he’s so frank about how rare that is for him, and how absolutely over the filmmaking process he is by the time a movie wraps. “Again, normally, we’re like, ‘Get me the f**k out of here. Get me to the editing room, and let’s go figure out what this is,'” he told audiences as the pre-screening Q&A, “But on ‘Joker’ one, we just wanted to keep [going] […] We just loved Arthur.”
Phoenix and Phillips started talking sequel ideas midway through the first movie’s production
While it’s an actor’s job to love the character they play, it’s admittedly funny to hear Phillips speak at length about how much he and Phoenix adore Arthur Fleck, a mentally unstable, Travis Bickle-like character who ends up killing a man on live TV just to get some attention by the end of the first film. The movie arguably romanticizes Arthur’s mental illness while simultaneously condemning the lack of social and personal support he received, all of which turned it into a powder keg of controversy upon its release in 2019. Yet the character clearly meant a lot to the actor and director, and audience members responded in kind, with “Joker” grossing a staggering $1.06 billion at the global box office.
Before all that, though, it was a weird little movie that Phillips and Phoenix weren’t sure would connect with audiences. “You never want to talk about a sequel certainly publicly before the movie comes out because, God knows, what if it just doesn’t work,” Phillips explained. “But Joaquin and I really started talking about a sequel probably on day 30 of the 55-day shoot on the first film, and half of it was joking, and half of it wasn’t.” He added that the pair would come up with sequel ideas in part to make one another laugh “and say, ‘Well, what if we did this? What if we did that?'” It was only once the film became a full-blown success that the pair could start entertaining the ideas they’d been incubating for real. “When the movie came out, the movie was sort of embraced by people, and people loved Arthur as much as Joaquin and I loved Arthur. So we were like, ‘Well, what if?'” Phillips noted.
What if, indeed. Audiences will get the answer to the “what if?” question when “Joker: Folie à Deux” hits theaters on October 4, 2024.
