Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter announced that a Joker sequel was in development, and that Todd Phillips is in talks to return as director. The report also noted that plans were in place to bring Joaquin Phoenix back, and that Phillips was in talks for more DC origin films.

Following this, Deadline came out with their own article saying that THR’s story was nothing but clickbait, and that there was no sequel in development, and no movement at all on any future DC origin films.

A third report was then released by Variety, who stated that, while sequel options for Joker are bring explored by Phillips and DC, as well as the idea of smaller DC-origin films, nothing was set in stone.

So, we have three reports, all essentially saying different things. Which one should be believed? Well, according to Joker director Todd Phillips, it looks like Deadline may have come out on top.

At an awards/guild screening for his monumentally successful feature, Todd Phillips took park in a Q&A, where he said that he was caught off guard by all the reports, saying that there was no Joker sequel in development at this time:

“Yeah that was written about today, and I have to be honest, it came out of nowhere. It referred to a meeting that was never had,” Phillips admitted, confirming Deadline’s story. “I thought it was anticipatory at best. Obviously, sequels have been discussed when a movie that cost $60 million made $1 billion, but we have not had any serious conversations about it.”

Phillips then went on to say that Joaquin was not attached to any future DC projects (at this time), and that he, nor co-writer Scott Silver, have any kind of deal with WB:

“We don’t have a deal with Joaquin, they don’t have a deal with me and the writer. I don’t know where that came from, honest to God,” Phillips professed. “It’s a hard thing to refute when you don’t have a Twitter account, and you’re not really out there. You just go, ‘Ok, this will disappear in 24 hours, let’s move on.’”

The original story noted that Phillips apparently had a meeting with WB, saying that he wanted access to the DC Comics catalogue to spearhead a division of smaller, more director-driven films (similar to Joker and Logan). While WB apparently said no, they did give him a couple of characters to play around with. Now, this whole thing was apparently wrong.

Personally, I hope DC continues to make “elseworlds” style films, and give characters, and filmmakers, a chance to breathe outside the realms of shared universes. Whether Phillips returns to DC or not, let’s hope that they continue this trend started by Joker.

Source: The Playlist