There have been rumors about a sequel to Todd Phillips’ Joker since 2019. There was going to be a sequel! There wasn’t going to be a sequel! And then… nothing. We haven’t had to think about Joaquin Phoenix’s weird little dance for years.
That time has come to an end. On Instagram, Phillips posted what seems to be confirmation that a Joker sequel isn’t just a nebulous concept: There’s a screenplay. And a title… We’re looking at Joker: Folie à Deux.
You’ll have to forgive me for a bit of side-eye at that title, which in my world belongs to a Fall Out Boy record and doesn’t need to be repurposed here. But anyway! It does hint that perhaps Joker won’t be so much of a solo act the second time around. “Folie à deux” basically means “madness of two,” or, as Merriam-Webster puts it, “the presence of the same or similar delusional ideas in two persons closely associated with one another.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CehX0rGPxQi
Does this mean we’re getting another version of Harley Quinn? A very serious, arty version, that is. Not like Margot Robbie’s Harley in the Suicide Squads, or Kaley Cuoco’s under-appreciated animated version.
Joker was divisive—and successful. It earned over a billion dollars and a dozen Oscar nominations; Phoenix won Best Actor, and Hildur Guðnadóttir for Best Original Score. Emmet Asher-Perrin wrote, “Joker, for all that it tries to pack in themes on isolation, mental illness, societal unrest, domestic abuse, class division, and the effects of generational violence, doesn’t seem to have any idea what it’s about.”
There’s no word yet on when Joker: Folie à Deux may hit screens.
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Leech
