Move over, Venom – it looks like Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker has a shot at becoming the highest-grossing October debut ever.
According to Business Insider, tracking for Joker is building at an incredible pace, and a $100 million-plus opening is not out of the question for the crime drama in spite of Joaquin Phoenix’s incredibly dark take on the Batman villain. Should those projections hold, it would be above the likes of 2017’s Justice League, which had the benefit of opening the week before before Thanksgiving – something that would be quite an accomplishment given that the film is R-rated, and is not an action movie.
Much of that buzz comes from the sheer amount of critical praise that the movie has received, winning the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival – no small feat for any movie, and particularly unheard of for one based on a comic book property. Even still, the trailers for the film have attained a lot of attention by DC Films standards, so the odds of the movie being a hit are stacked in Joker‘s favor.
The movie is not part of the DC Extended Universe, and seems to play into Warner Bros.’s interests of making creator-driven superhero movies over necessarily building a hyper-connected shared universe… At least for the time being. Even still, director Todd Phillips has said that he’s open to doing a sequel if Joaquin Phoenix – who originally saw the project as a one-and-done deal – is interested in returning.
Here is the official synopsis for Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker:
Director Todd Phillips’ Joker centers around the iconic arch nemesis and is an original, standalone fictional story not seen before on the big screen. Phillips’ exploration of 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.
Directed by Todd Phillips from a script he co-wrote with Scott Silver, Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Douglas Hodge, Marc Maron, Josh Pais, and Shea Whigham.
Joker will be released in theaters on October 4, 2019. Stay tuned for the latest news on the Joaquin Phoenix movie!
Source: Business Insider
