As of Saturday afternoon, “Joker: Folie à Deux” appears to be on track as director Todd Phillips posted a teaser image announcing “day one” of production.
“Day 1. Our son. #joker,” Phillips captioned the picture. The movie’s creator posted a picture of Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix. The murderous Arkham Asylum inmate is laying still while an apparent orderly at the prison shaves him. Phoenix appears to have regained the wiry build he developed for his role as Fleck in the first 2019 movie.
Phillips and Scott Silver, who also co-authored the Joker, penned the sequel’s script, albeit the storyline is unclear. The first movie featured a want to be a stand-up comic who also worked as a clown and had mental health problems. When things got difficult, he started to spiral, which caused him to adopt the recognizable Joker character. Folie à Deux is a medical word for a mental condition that affects two or more persons, typically members of a close family, and might be seen as a signal for the sequel.
After directing the first movie, Phillips is back to helm “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Under Phillips’ direction, the dark comic book adaptation earned a record-breaking 11 Academy Award nominations, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and became a huge box office hit with worldwide ticket sales exceeding $1 billion. The follow-up has been compared to a musical.
On October 9, 2024, precisely five years after the release of the first movie, “Joker: Folie à Deux” will be released.