No kidding, Todd Phillips says he’s actually done with Joker after Folie À Deux

If you couldn’t hear the sounds of maniacal laughter in the distance as the Clown Prince of Crime suggests that maybe society is the crazy one, a new Joker movie is dancing down the staircase this Friday. Being a Batman movie and all, despite its best efforts to pretend it is anything but, people wonder if this is the last we’ll ever see of the clown guy who put his fingers in baby Batman’s mouth. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the LA premiere of Joker 2, Phillips said he wasn’t interested in making a Harley Quinn movie. The director said he was about finished with this universe—these superheroes. “It’s not really where this movie is headed for me,” Phillips said. “I feel like my time in the DC Universe was these two films.”

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. When Phillips first pitched Joker, it was part of a host of one-off DC villain movies for a specialty imprint called “DC Black.” “It wasn’t a movie, it was, let’s do a whole label,” Phillips said in 2019. “They shut that down quickly, and I get it. Who am I to walk in and start a label at a film studio? But they said, ‘let’s do this one.'” At least for a while, Warner and Phillips were convinced Joker would be a lone entry in the DC canon. But after Joker came out, Phillips was more down-to-earth on the prospect of a follow-up. In his words, “A movie doesn’t make a billion dollars and they don’t talk about a sequel.” What we didn’t know was that Lady Gaga was going to be involved. Maybe if she asks nicely, she can have a sequel too. Or perhaps the movie will make a billion, and he’ll have no choice.

Joker: Folie À Deux opens on October 4.