Yesterday, we received news that a new Joker movie was in the works over at Warner Bros. While details on the project are minimal, that hasn't stopped many from voicing their displeasure with the entire concept. As reported, the new film will be an origin story for the clown prince of crime, it will be set in the 1980s, and it will be completely unconnected with the Jared Leto version of the character introduced in Suicide Squad. And because that sentence wasn't strange enough by itself, the movie is being produced by Martin Scorsese. You don't even need to imagine how all this is making the heads of DC fans combust. Most of the issue seems to be over the fact that an origin story for the Joker is antithetical to the entire concept of the character.
In addition to seeing Martin Scorsese produce the new film, it will be directed by Todd Phillips, the man behind The Hangover trilogy, with a script by Scott Silver, the man behind 8 Mile. These two ideas also have fans questioning the new project, as they aren't exactly names you'd expect to see attached to comic book movies.
Of course, the fact that this movie won't in any way be connected to the existing DCEU Joker certainly does open up the floodgates of ideas. They can literally do anything with the character as this origin story wouldn't technically be any sort of canon. DC Comics does a lot of different things with their own characters under the Elseworld titles which tell alternative universe stories using familiar characters. That seems essentially to be what's going on here, though for many the issue isn't that Warner Bros. is changing things so much as it seems some don't have confidence that they'll do anything particularly creative with the opportunity.
Ultimately, an origin story idea seems to have a lot of people running scared because they just don't always work out really well. In the past, we have at least one example of a massive pop culture villain who was given an origin story that many fans felt did a significant disservice to the character as a whole because he got turned into a whiny little kid. There's certainly a chance something similar could happen here.
It's far too early to really know whether this movie is going to work or not, but needless to say a lot of people have questions. At the very least, things should be entertaining moving forward as everybody seems to have a joke available on this topic. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend as we'll have all the news on this new film as it happens.
