Warner gave the 'Joker 2' director

After its opening weekend box office failure, details about ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’s turbulent production process are emerging. That story lacks actor-director conflicts and production company interference. Quite the opposite.

Outside DC’s canon. In its day, the first “Joker” was lauded for its roots in the DC publishing house’s cosmogony (character traits, setting in Gotham, Bruce Wayne’s appearance) while refusing to follow the other Batman films’ extravagant villains and gothic airs. At the request of director Todd Phillips, the sequel’s DC universe connection is even weaker, and the future Two-Face’s brief appearance suggests an apocryphal origin.

He’s expelled, not leaving. This rejection of the DC universe has caused public tensions between Phillips and James Gunn, the label’s film relaunch architect. Phillips said this was his last DC film, but Gunn said it never was. The credits don’t include the DC Studios logo because of it. Gunn and his partner Peter Safran may have missed the Los Angeles premiere party for ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’, where Warner CEO David Zaslav proudly attended.

A firm hand is needed. Todd Phillips was free to make a sequel after ‘Joker’ became the highest-grossing ‘R’ film in history until ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ and the first to surpass one billion dollars. That prevented Gunn and Safran, who oversee all DC projects, from interfering. Phillips clearly wants to distance himself from a superheroic cinema with a bad reputation, but would ‘Joker’ have been as popular without the Joker?

Directly emotional. Not that ‘Joker: Folie a Deux’ doesn’t belong to the DC universe, but that its way of proclaiming it to the four winds is “betraying” the fan base that praised the first film. Joaquin Phoenix’s final speech in the sequel claims that the Joker doesn’t exist and that he only wants to be Arthur Fleck, which alienates his fiction fans, who leave him to his fate in court. True to life, fans have rejected the film’s message and left the box office.

Absolute power. Phillips was only accountable to the film’s producers Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, Warner’s new film department heads since the summer of 2023, who approved his first project, Variety reported. Phillips wanted to distance himself from DC’s superheroics. Since Zaslav, the CEO, met with Phillips to cut the budget, something was wrong. Shooting in London would have saved 20%, but the director refused to leave LA. The Venice premiere was unclear to Zaslav, but Phillips wanted to follow the first film’s path.

Test screenings end. Hollywood filmmakers often feel pain when their projects are cut due to poor test screening results. Warner justified Phillips’ refusal by saying they didn’t want leaks. A strange excuse: Marvel films are more sensitive to spoilers and all go through test screenings. These thermometers predict public opinion well.

High wages drive producers away. Now we know how much Todd Phillips earned for this gig: $20 million, as much as the film’s star. The three of them account for over a quarter of the budget, including Lady Gaga’s $12 million. Bradley Cooper, Gaga’s old friend and Joker producer, will not return. Variety reports that Warner executives say their commercial instinct would not have let the film derail.

Uneven times for Warner. Paradoxically, Warner has just signed one of the year’s biggest hits, the great ‘Beetlechus Beetlechus’, which does not erase previous failures like ‘Furia’, ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’, or ‘The Colour Purple’. The company is having a roller coaster 2024, but losing ‘Joker’ is especially hard. Analyst Jeff Bock compares it to ‘Speed 2’: unexpected success, uneven sequel, box office failure, and potential career impact through puncture.

Warner gave the ‘Joker 2’ director

By triji

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Warner gave the ‘Joker 2’ director

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