Todd Phillips announced that he is stepping away from DC Films after the release of ‘Joker: Folie à Deux.’
The director, who first made waves with 2019’s ‘Joker,’ confirmed that there will be no third installment in the series. “I feel like my time in the DC Universe was these two films,” Phillips told The Hollywood Reporter when asked if the story will continue with Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn. As the movie turned out to be a flop, this was something people were curious about.
Phillips’ departure comes after years of speculation about if he would return for more ‘Joker’ films. Phillips said there were no plans for a sequel after the success of the first movie, but he was open to working with Joaquin Phoenix again if the opportunity arose. ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ was made despite this, but it received mixed reactions from fans.
Phillips had a bigger vision in 2019 for what he called ‘DC Black.’ His idea was to create a new label for darker, stand-alone films about DC characters, separate from the interconnected DC Extended Universe. He pitched the concept to Warner Bros. and hoped that ‘Joker’ would be the first movie under this new label. Phillips wanted other directors to also create films under the DC Black name to offer more mature takes on classic DC villains.
Warner Bros. didn’t go forward with the plan. They decided to produce ‘Joker’ under the regular DC Films banner and kept it separate from the larger DCEU without starting a new label. Phillips proposed two other movies with different directors, but those films were never made. There were rumors that a ‘Mr. Freeze’ or ‘Clayface’ movie could’ve been part of this plan, but nothing was officially confirmed.
The new leaders of DC Studios are James Gunn and Peter Safran, and they are now in charge of the company’s future. They’ve reorganized the DC Films division into DC Studios and are introducing a new DC Universe starting in 2025. Projects that don’t fit into the main universe, like ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ will be branded as ‘Elseworlds’ to separate them from the rest of the DC stories.
You can still catch ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ in theaters now. It currently has a 35% critic score and a 36% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
