‘Joker’ Director Todd Phillips Says, ‘You Can’t Beat Marvel’

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Joker director Todd Phillips commented on how the Joaquin Phoenix film tried to differentiate itself from Marvel films.

While Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe established itself as a fan-favorite franchise and box office juggernaut well before Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing film of all-time, Warner Bros. and DC’s own shared world has struggled to gain the same level of reverence even with some financial success of their own. Now, DC Films appears to be rethinking its strategy and will focus on individual projects that don’t necessarily follow the Marvel model of being connected to a shared universe.

One of those projects is Joker, a standalone film from director Todd Phillips that focuses on Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is a universe that is set apart from DC’s Extended Universe. In an interview with ComicBook.com, Todd Phillips noted that this darker and real-world take on the Joker was partly influenced by their efforts to stand apart from Marvel:

“You can’t beat Marvel — it’s a giant behemoth. Let’s do something they can’t do.”

Are you excited to see Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s take on the Joker? Would you like to see more superhero films make an effort to avoid replicating Marvel’s success and try something different? Could Marvel try something more serious one day? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

Here is the official synopsis for 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 fracturedsociety. 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.

Source: ComicBook.com

Sebastian Peris

Sebastian Peris

Canadian film buff, political junkie, comic book geek, and board game enthusiast.