FILM · 2019 · CANADA
Joker
- Directed by
- Todd Phillips
- Runtime
- 122 min
- Studio
- Warner Bros. Pictures, Joint Effort, Village Roadshow Pictures
28 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (28)
- #001
Between 2014 and 2015, Joaquin Phoenix told his agent he wanted to act in a low-budget character study about a comic book villain, such as the Joker, before Todd Phillips pitched Joker in 2016.
- #002
Joaquin Phoenix ruled out the Joker for his character study idea, saying the character had already been done, and declined his agent's suggestion of an exploratory meeting with Warner Bros.
- #003
Todd Phillips had repeatedly turned down offers to direct comic-based films because he considered them loud and uninteresting, and Joker grew out of his wish to make a more grounded comic book film.
- #004
According to Todd Phillips, he was drawn to the Joker because he believed no definitive portrayal of the character existed, which he expected would give him considerable creative freedom.
- #005
Todd Phillips proposed that DC Films distinguish its slate from Marvel Studios by producing low-budget, standalone films.
- #006
According to Kim Masters and Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter, Jared Leto was displeased that Joker existed as a project separate from his own interpretation of the character in the DCEU.
- #007
In October 2019, Masters reported that Leto felt alienated and upset upon learning that Warner Bros. allowed Todd Phillips to proceed with Joker, despite having promised Leto a standalone DCEU Joker film.
- #008
Todd Phillips said Joaquin Phoenix was the only actor he considered for Joker, and Phillips and Silver wrote the script with Phoenix in mind.
- #009
Joaquin Phoenix said he was excited when he learned of Joker because it was the kind of film he wanted to make, calling it unique and unlike a typical studio movie.
- #010
Joaquin Phoenix took time to commit to playing the Joker in Joker because the role intimidated him, and he criticized the simplified, reductive archetypes common in such films.
- #011
According to producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff, securing Warner Bros.' approval for the script took some time, partly because of concerns about its content.
- #012
Todd Phillips said the year-long writing of Joker involved "a zillion hurdles" because of how visible the character is.
- #013
Phillips also named 1970s character studies such as Serpico (1973) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the silent film The Man Who Laughs (1928) and several musicals as inspirations for Joker.
- #014
The premise of Joker was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), which portrays the Joker as a failed stand-up comedian, while the climactic talk show scene drew on a similar scene in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986).
- #015
Phillips said Joker does not follow anything from the comic books, adding that the film is not doing Joker but the story of becoming Joker; he later clarified that no specific comic was used as inspiration and that elements were picked and chosen from the character's history.
- #016
Phillips and Silver drew on elements of existing Joker lore to build an original story, with Phillips aiming for it to feel as authentic as possible.
- #017
Because the comics give the Joker no definitive origin, Phillips and Silver had considerable creative freedom and pushed each other daily to devise something totally insane.
- #018
Phillips and Silver kept the Joker's past ambiguous in a "multiple choice" manner by making him an unreliable narrator whose storylines may be delusions, and left his mental illnesses unspecified; Phillips said the whole film is open to interpretation.
- #019
Todd Phillips said that the April 2018 draft of the Joker script that leaked online was an old version dating from six months before filming started.
- #020
Todd Phillips chose not to pursue legal action over the leaked Joker script, saying he liked having an old version in circulation.
- #021
Immediately after the Phoenix deal, Warner Bros. officially green-lit Joker, gave it that title and set an October 4, 2019, release date.
- #022
Frances McDormand turned down an offer to play the Joker's mother in Joker, and Frances Conroy was cast in the role instead.
- #023
Principal photography on Joker began in September 2018 in New York City under the working title Romeo.
- #024
Bradley Cooper came aboard Joker as a producer, and Lawrence Sher served as director of photography; Phillips had worked with both men before.
- #025
According to Zazie Beetz, Todd Phillips rewrote the entire Joker script while the film was in production, since Joaquin Phoenix's weight loss for the role ruled out reshoots.
- #026
Beetz described the Joker production routine as writing a scene in Todd Phillips's trailer for that night, memorizing the lines during hair and makeup, performing them, and reshooting the same scene three weeks later.
- #027
Todd Phillips recalled that Joaquin Phoenix sometimes left the set during Joker filming because he lost self-control and needed to compose himself, which confused other actors who thought they had done something wrong.
- #028
Robert De Niro was one of the few people Joaquin Phoenix never walked out on during Joker, and De Niro described Phoenix as very intense in what he was doing, as it should be.
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- Wikipedia Joker (2019 film) — Wikipedia
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