Joaquin Phoenix wants to use Joker 2 as a stage for his protests for animal rights and climate change, reports say.
Todd Phillips is reportedly all ready writing the script for Joker 2 but rumour has it that Joaquin Phoenix has been hired to co-write and wants to inject some of his political beliefs into the film.
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The Hangover trilogy director Todd Phillips has allegedly been contracted to co-write the sequel for the Joker sequel after the astounding box office success of the first movie and Joaquin Phoenix is eager and excited to put on the fool’s makeup once again.
According The Hollywood Reporter, Todd Phillips will is set to return to writers table for the Joker 2. However, the article did not specify whether Scott Silver, Joker co-writer, will join him. An old rumour suggested that Joaquin Phoenix would only return as the Joker if he got more creative input in the next film. Is Joaquin Phoenix co-writing the Joker 2?
In April 2020 we reported that Joaquin Phoenix wanted to turn the Joker 2 into a protest piece. The 46-year-old actor has committed the last decade or so of his life into animal rights and climate change activism and now, according to sources, Phoenix wants to include those themes in the next Joker instalment.
Phoenix was very hesitant when it came to accepting the role of a comic book villain. He has turned down several lead roles in major Marvel movies and once even claimed that he’d never play any part in a comic book adaptation film. As a matter of fact, Phoenix never actually agreed to play the Joker, he just showed up.
“It was a pursuit to get him because initially it feels like, ‘ugh, comic book movie.’ Just the idea of it is something he wasn’t so keen on pursuing, and even when I would explain to him it’s not that, it kind of says that, but really we’re doing this other thing, there was a little resistance. But the more I got to know him, the more I hung out with him, and we spent a lot of time talking about what the movie will look and feel like, and then one day he magically showed up. He never said yes. He just one day showed up to a wardrobe fitting… It was an incredible partnership,” Todd Phillips told IndieWire.
Fans believed that Phoenix’s Joker movie was one-and-done type of deal, especially because Warner Bros initially revealed that this movie would not connect in anyway to the current DC cinematic universe or the upcoming The Batman origin story (although that is now contested).
But shortly after the box office numbers started trickling in rumours started spreading that Joker 2 had immediately been greenlit, under the condition that Joaquin Phoenix returns. Sources claim that Phoenix would only return if he got to co-write the sequel so he could include themes that are very near and dear to his heart: animal rights and climate change.