Having just debuted at the Venice Film Festival to an eight-minute standing ovation and rave reviews, Warner Bros. and DC Films are surely rubbing their hands together with glee over Joker, the upcoming origin story for the iconic Batman villain from director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince of Crime.
However, speaking to The Los Angeles Times, Phillips has revealed that he found it difficult to get executives on board with his vision for the film, stating that it was a “year-long process” to convince of the studio to give the movie the go ahead:
“There were emails about: ‘You realize we sell Joker pajamas at Target’. There were a zillion hurdles, and you just sort of had to navigate those one at a time. At the time I would curse them in my head every day. But then I have to put it in perspective and go, ‘They’re pretty bold that they did this.'”
SEE ALSO: Why are people getting so crazy about Joker?
Producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff went on to state that Joker’s modest budget of $55 million (a fraction of your typical comic book movie) was one of the reasons which convinced the studio to move ahead and allow Phillips “a tremendous amount of space… to make the movie he wanted to make.”
Joker centers around Arthur Fleck, who is indelibly portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night…but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.
Joker is set for release on October 4th 2019 and stars Joaquin Phoenix (The Sisters Brothers), Robert De Niro (Goodfellas), Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2), Bill Camp (Red Sparrow), Frances Conroy (American Horror Story), Brett Cullen (Narcos), Glenn Fleshler (Billions), Douglas Hodge (Penny Dreadful), Marc Maron (GLOW), Josh Pais (Motherless Brooklyn), Shea Whigham (Kong: Skull Island), Douglas Hodge (Robin Hood) and Dante Pereira-Olson (You Were Never Really Here).
