Joker director Todd Philips revealed his original DC Black pitch to Warner Bros. included two other films.
After Joker‘s critical and financial success, there has been a lot of questions surrounding a sequel and other DC villain standalone films. A premature report came out last month saying that Todd Phillips was developing a Joker sequel and other DC films. That wasn’t actually the case, but a Joker sequel and its model will surely be talked about over at Warner Bros. after the Joaquin Phoenix-led film crossed a billion dollars worldwide.
When details about the Joker standalone project were first coming out, it was reported that Todd Phillips also pitched a new film label called “DC Black” or “DC Dark.” This new label was pitched by Joker director Todd Phillips to differentiate it from the DCEU films with lower budgeted character studies. On an upcoming IGN UK podcast, Todd Phillips revealed that his original DC Black label pitch to Warner Bros. included two other movies with different directors:
“I pitched it as three movies, Joker being the first with me, and then these two other movies, with two other directors. But I don’t really want to name them, because then it’ll become a thing and I’m pulling these directors into it when I’ve never even told them about it. It was just me telling Warner Bros. about it.”
Todd Phillips later said Warner Bros. thought a new DC label wasn’t necessary:
“I still think it’s a great idea. But I’ll be honest with you, their argument – well, it wasn’t an argument – their thing is, there’s no reason to create its own label, there’s no reason to go to all that trouble. Just when we want to one of these kind of movies, we’ll do it, just like Joker is. I get that, but I also thought it was just kind of cool if it became a thing.”
Todd Phillips also had this to say about doing other DC character studies:
“I think there are [DC character studies I’d like to see] personally, but there’s nothing that I’ve been drawn to, no.”
Do you think we will get another Joker film from Todd Phillips? Do you want it to happen? What do you think the other two DC Black movies pitched were? Comment 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 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 is now playing in theater. Stay tuned for more updates on the Joker sequel, Todd Phillips, and DC Black.
Source: IGN
