By Ben Travis | Posted 9 Jul 2019

When Todd Phillips’ Joker hits the screen, audiences are in store for an intense, enthralling performance from Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck – the man who will eventually become the iconic, anarchic villain who gleefully terrorises Gotham City. But Phoenix isn’t the only acting heavyweight gracing the movie – in a key sequence, the unravelling Fleck will come face to face with talk show host Murray Franklin, played by none other than Robert De Niro. It’s set to be a showdown for the ages, the chance to see two of the greatest actors of all time play off against each other.

While you wouldn’t typically expect to see De Niro in a comic book movie – and this notably isn’t your typical comic book movie – it was Phillips and Scott Silver’s screenplay that hooked him in for the part. “Bob really loved the script,” Phillips tells Empire in the August 2019 issue. “I met with him and said, ‘I’d be lying to you if I said we weren’t influenced by a lot of your movies.’ I talked with him about Taxi Driver and about The King Of Comedy, which is one of my favourite movies of all time.”

The King Of Comedy connection is a fitting one to draw. Scorsese’s 1982 film starred De Niro as Rupert Pupkin – a wannabe-comedian who kidnaps a talk show host in order to get his shot at the big-time. Now he’s playing the opposite side of that dynamic – and even a bomb scare, which occurred on De Niro’s first day of Joker shooting, when an explosive device was delivered to his production office in Manhattan, couldn’t stop him joining the production. “We had FBI guys showing up to search the set,” Phillips recalls. “And I thought, ‘Oh god, what’s he gonna be like?’ And he comes in like it’s nothing, just ready to rock, knew his shit. He’s amazing.”

Read much more about Joker in Empire’s world-exclusive report – including interviews with Phoenix, Phillips, and producers Bradley Cooper and Emma Tillinger Koskoff – hitting newsstands on Thursday 11 July. Can’t wait to get your hands on a copy? Pre-order yours online here, with free p&p within the UK. Joker hits UK cinemas on 4 October