Joker Director Todd Phillips Shares First Look On Joaquin Phoenix In The Film
The production stage of DC Films’ Joker is officially underway. The film is being directed by Todd Phillips, who seems to be celebrating the film in a peculiar manner.
Phillips recently took to Instagram sharing a head-shot like photo of Joaquin Phoenix with a caption saying, “Arthur”, confirming the rumours that the character’s real name in the film is going to be Arthur Fleck.
This picture looks extremely striking and will certainly excite a lot of DC fans as it provides us with an idea of Phoenix’s look in the film. The photo doesn’t show him with a clown make-up, something that’s usually associated with the character but it’s pretty evident that the actor has worked hard to undergo a transformation for the role.
The film is expected to be an origins film for the character where he fails as a standup comedian before succumbing into a life of villainy. The film is being executively produced by Martin Scorsese and also stars Robert De Niro, Frances Corony and Zazie Beetz.
“I wouldn’t quite classify this as like any genre,” Phoenix said in a recent interview. “I wouldn’t say it’s a superhero movie, or a studio movie or a … It feels unique, and I think more than anything, and probably the most important thing, is Todd seems very passionate about it and very giving, and so that’s exciting. I think, underneath the excitement of these films, and the size of them, there are these incredible characters that are dealing with real life struggles. And sometimes that is uncovered and exposed, and sometimes it isn’t, and so I always felt, like, there were characters in comics that were really interesting and deserve the opportunity to be kind of study. And so I think that’s what Todd sees appealing about this idea.”
It seems like Phoenix has had an idea in his head about this for quite some time.
“Three or four years ago, I called my agent and said ‘Why don’t they want to take one of these characters and just make a lower budget film about it, a movie but a character study, and why not take one of the villains?’” Phoenix revealed in a recent interview. “And I thought, ‘You can’t do the Joker, because, you know, it’s just you can’t do that character, it’s just been done.’ So I was trying to think of other characters, and he said ‘I’ll set up a general meeting with Warner Bros.’ And I said ‘I’m not gonna go, I can’t go to a general meeting.’ So I completely forgot about it, and so then I heard about this idea, I was like, ‘Oh that’s so exciting, that’s the kind of experience I wanted to have, with a movie based on a comic character.’ I felt like you could get something on screen.”
Joker is expected to hit the theatres on October 4 next year.
