'Get Out's Lakeith Stanfield Wants To Play Batman Villain The Joker

Lakeith Stanfield, best known for his roles in Get Out and Sorry to Bother You, still hopes to tackle the role of The Joker in a DC Comics project at some point -- and, according to a new interview with Deadline, he is convinced it will someday happen.

It has been more than a year since the actor first voiced interest -- then, in a tweet directed at Martin Scorcese. Scorcese served as the executive producer on the recently-wrapped Joker origin movie, which starred Joaquin Phoenix in the title role and will be in theaters next year.

"I want people to dress up as me as black Joker, when that inevitably happens," Stanfield said in the interview. "I just think there are so many things that haven't been touched yet in terms of how the performance can be delivered -- When I make the movie myself."

The Deadline piece characterizes The Joker -- previously immortalized on film by Academy Award winners Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger -- as this generation's Hamlet. It is, the report says, seeming to suggest that the context came from Stanfield but not directly quoting him, the job that every actor wants to get a crack at.

Shortly after the start of production on Joker, when Warner Bros. released a quick video clip of Phoenix in wardrobe from the film, along with a song and lights that revealed peeks at his Joker along the way, Stanfield released a similar video of himself on Instagram (it has since been taken down).

Even ignoring video game and animated interpretations, there are at least three active Jokers at present: Jared Leto's from Suicide Squad, Phoenix's, and Cameron Monaghan on Gotham. With Gotham ending and Leto likely not appearing in another movie (although officially it has not been ruled out), Warner could go one of two ways: limiting the character's appearances in order to more tightly focus the character's identity in popular culture, or filling those "gaps" with more new takes. If the latter happened, Stanfield could be a solid choice to bring one of those takes to life.

Joker seems to be the one closest to what Stanfield would want to do: it is an examination of what made the villain into what he ultimately becomes and, according to Phoenix, "anything but" a superhero movie.

Joker premieres in theaters on October 4, 2019.