Todd Phillips Wants to See a Batman Movie Set in His Joker Movie World

Joker and Batman are intrinsically linked to one another, and while Todd Phillips‘ Joker only featured a brief appearance of a young Bruce Wayne, the director confessed that he’d like to see a full-fledged Batman film set in the world of Gotham he created. Phillips also made it clear that he wouldn’t be the person to helm such an endeavor, more that he would enjoy witnessing such an endeavor. While Matt Reeves is currently crafting his The Batman starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader, all indications about the adventure are that it, like Joker, will be a standalone adventure.

“It’s a beautiful Gotham. What I would like to see someone tackle is what Batman looks like from that Gotham,” Phillips shared with Variety. “I’m not saying I’m going to do that. What was interesting to me about the inclusion of Batman in our movie was, ‘What kind of Batman does that Gotham make?’ That’s all I meant by that.”

Given that Phillips’ film was largely met with positive reviews, leading to it becoming the first R-rated movie to earn more than $1 billion worldwide, it would seem like an obvious decision to deliver audiences a continuation of the journey. However, the nature of the film itself was meant to deliver audiences the origins of the villainous character, as various other films have depicted what happened when Joker embraced his nefarious nature.

Batman has already earned a number of adventures, with one of the appeals of Joker being that the story would offer a new perspective on the world of the DC Comics characters. While the concept of Batman clearly aided the appeal of Joker, Phillips thinks it was the merits of the film itself that made it such a success, far more than any connection to the Dark Knight.

“I think there are themes in the movie that really resonated with people,” Phillips shared with Deadline. “None of us thought an R-rated movie could do over $1 billion across the world. But I think the themes in it really resonated. The thing Scott Silver and I set out to do when we wrote the movie together was to make something meaningful in that comic book space, but also something really that addressed what was going on in 2016, when we started writing. It’s pretty obvious what was happening in our country in 2017 while we were writing it, and really wanted to use Joker to make a movie about the loss of compassion and the lack of decorum in the world.”

Stay tuned for details on the possible future of the Joker universe.

Would you like to see a Batman film set in this world? Let us know in the comments below!