Todd Phillips, Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix will be busy for the next five months. According to a post on Production Weekly, “Joker 2: Folie A Deux” is set to start production on November 30th and has a wrap date of April 6th.
The film already has an Oct. 4, 2024 release date, so you can scratch away any hope of seeing this one next year. Director Phillips is clearly going for something much more ambitious than originally perceived with the sequel. They’re throwing the blueprint out of the door and making something singular, unique, a very dark movie musical.
The best thing Phillips can do is make a completely different movie than the first one. That way it’ll separate both films as entirely different entities. I don’t think having Gaga is such a terrible idea, might as well go for full-on WEIRD with this one.
The French term “folie a deux” is a psychological term derived from when two people engage in a shared delusive reality together. You think Phillips wants to go back to Venice? “Joker” won the Golden Lion there in 2019, the sequel making it into competition would be strange, but not surprising. It does have a fall movie season release date, so anything is possible.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.