JOKER Origin Tale, Matt Reeves Speaks Standalone BATMAN & JOKER & HARLEY QUINN Movie
What a week for Batman related movie news!
The big one is that Warner Bros has hired Hangover director Todd Phillips to direct a 1980s-set Joker origin tale. Phillips will also write alongside 8 Mile writer, Scott Silver – but the real kicker is that Martin Scorsese will produce the flick.
According to Deadline:
”The intention is to make a gritty and grounded hard-boiled crime film set in early-’80s Gotham City that isn’t meant to feel like a DC movie as much as one of Scorsese’s films from that era, like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or The King Of Comedy.”
Phillips and Silver have already started writing the film, which doesn’t have a release date – but the film won’t star Jared Leto as the Clown Prince of Crime.
Deadline also states that ”This will be the first film under a new banner that has yet to be named in which WB can expand the canon of DC properties and create unique storylines with different actors playing the iconic characters”.
Speaking of Jared Leto… the Oscar-winning actor will re-team with Suicide Squad co-star Margot Robbie for a Joker and Harley Quinn spin-off flick. John Requa & Glenn Ficarra, who directed Robbie in Focus will write and direct.
Suicide Squad 2 is also on the way – if they can find a director.
Finally, The Batman director Matt Reeves is quoted as saying he has ‘‘a vision for a way to do something with that character that at least feels like it resonates with me personally and a perspective that can grow outward into other things but is really about –but when they approached me, what they said was, ‘look, it’s a standalone, this isn’t part of the extended universe.”
THR then stated that the aforementioned new label would see the end of Ben Affleck’s reign as The Batman:
“The new line, or possibly label, will allow for the making of movies that will stand apart and separate from those big-budget tentpoles. Matt Reeves’ The Batman, for example, is intended to not be connected to the Justice League universe but to be set in a different time period and star another actor.”
This was (seemingly) later retracted and Reeves tweeted the following…
What does this mean for Ben Affleck as Batman? We won’t know until after the release of Justice League In November.
Sources: Deadline, THR and Matt Reeves
