Credit: DC / Warner Bros.The new trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to the unexpected billion-dollar 2019 blockbuster starring Joaquin Phoenix as a version of the Clown Prince of Crime, has just dropped, and we got an unexpected reveal that one of the most iconic Batman villains of them all has been recast.
Joker had some stiff competition as a comic book movie when it was released in theaters, going up against both Captain Marvel (2019) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Despite that, the Todd Phillips-directed film ended up grossing over a billion dollars at the global box office (the first R-rated movie to ever do so), won the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, and earned Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award for Best Actor, oddly becoming the second actor to win an Oscar for playing the Joker.
The film was originally intended to be a one-off movie unconnected to the wider DC Universe, but unsurprisingly, Warner Bros. Pictures was not willing to let a box office smash like that go un-sequelized. Joaquin Phoenix has returned as Arthur Fleck, a mentally disturbed aspiring standup comedian who becomes an unexpected celebrity after murdering a talk show host (Robert De Niro) on television. This time around, he has been joined by fellow Oscar-winner Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, another DC villain icon.
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The synopsis for the film reads:
After murdering Murray Franklin live on television, Arthur Fleck is incarcerated in Arkham State Hospital, where he meets Harleen Quinzel. The two fall madly in love and experience musical madness through their shared delusions, while Fleck’s followers start a movement to free him from Arkham, ultimately giving rise to the Clown Prince of Crime’s criminal empire.
However, the new trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux also slipped in the nearly-hidden reveal of the presence of another supervillain: Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face.
Although Two-Face does not appear on screen in the trailer, the close captions to the official Warner Bros. video reveal that Harvey Dent is the speaker on a radio while Joaquin Phoenix is being transported in a car, presumably to Arkham Asylum. Dent appears to say, “Two years ago, the name Arthur Fleck hit Gotham like a hurricane. They believe Arthur Fleck to be some kind of martyr. Well, he’s not. He’s a monster.”
Given that Dent condemns Arthur Fleck’s actions, it seems almost certain that the movie will take place during his time as Gotham City’s District Attorney, prior to his scarring and turning to supervillainous crimes.
Harvey Dent/Two-Face has been portrayed in live-action films several times before. In the Tim Burton-directed Batman (1989), he was portrayed pre-scarring by Billy Dee Williams, Batman Forever (1995) starred Tommy Lee Jones as the character, and The Dark Knight (2008) saw Aaron Eckhart stepping into the role.
It is currently unknown who will play Harvey Dent in Joker: Folie à Deux; Jacob Lofland, Steve Coogan, Ken Leung, and Harry Lawtey have all been cast in undisclosed roles, so any of them could be a possibility. At the very least, this is a sign that the Joker Elseworlds timeline is expanding past its origins as an extended Taxi Driver (1976) homage.
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The success of Joker seems to have given Todd Phillips quite the blank check to work with, which may explain why the sequel is now a semi-musical involving numerous fantasy scenes of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga performing songs, dancing, and even apparently hosting a 1970s-style variety show. This could be the movie in which we finally get to see Two-Face take center stage and belt out a show tune, but it’s still too early to tell.
Joker: Folie à Deux will be released in theaters in the United States on October 4.
Who do you want to play this new version of Two-Face?