There’s no denying that Joker is a huge hit. The Todd Phillips directed film has smashed records at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time and working its way ever closer to the billion dollar mark at the worldwide box office — the film is currently sitting at roughly $878 million — and is considered by some to be a serious awards season contender, possibly even for the Best Picture Oscar that has eluded comic book-inspired films in the past. It’s this impressive level of success that may have some fans wondering if there could ever be a sequel and when it comes to the film’s star, Joaquin Phoenix, he’s not entirely ruling out his willingness to be involved with one. He’s just not interested in doing it because of the film’s commercial success.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times’ The Envelope, Phoenix was pretty direct about doing a sequel simply because Joker was successful, declaring that idea to be “ridiculous”.

 

“I wouldn’t do a sequel just because the first movie is successful,” Phoenix said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Even with that statement, though, Phoenix didn’t entirely rule out interest in a sequel for the right reasons. While he explained that part of the allure of Joker is that it is a one-off role, he also admitted that there was “too much to explore” in the film, so much so that he even sort of teased Phillips about when he was going to get started on the sequel during early production on Joker.

“Long before the release or before we had any idea if it would be successful, we talked about sequels,” Phoenix said. “In the second or third week of shooing, I was like, ‘Todd, can you just start working on a sequel? There’s way too much to explore.’ It was kind of in jest — but not really.”

Phoenix went on to say that he had even mocked up posters with the Joker snuck into old movies, the intent to be to show Phillips what could be done with the character.

 

“I basically said, ‘You could take this character and put him in any movie,'” Phoenix said. “So I did a photo shoot with the on-set photographer and we made posters where I Photoshopped Joker into 10 classic movies: Rosemary’s Baby, Raging Bull, Yentl. If you see it, you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’d watch that movie.’ Yentl with Joker? That would be … amazing!”

 

What do you think? Let us know and don’t forget to subscribe to The Nerds Take 2 YouTube channel!