Joker: Folie a Deux Opens With Looney Tunes-Inspired Animated Sequence

Deadpool & Wolverine may have unseated Joker as the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, but there’s a new Joker coming — and it’s going to get a little weird. The movie, which will feature musical elements and stars Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, is set to debut in theaters in October. When it does, the movie will apparently have highly-stylized elements including a “variety-show sequence” and a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon that will open the movie. That’s according to a new profile of director Todd Phillips, the The Hangover veteran whose twisted take on Gotham managed to out-draw The Batman at the box office.

According to Variety, Joker: Folie à Deux recruited The Triplets of Belleville animator Sylvain Chomet to animate the cartoon. The variety show sequence, according to the report, will present Joker and Harley as a twisted riff on Sonny and Cher.

These formalist elements may have first come to life when they were toying with doing the movie as a stage show. According to Phillips, they briefly entertained the idea of doing a Broadway engagement for the story, but the practical concerns became too much to overcome even before COVID completely obliterated the chances of it happening. The idea, that Arthur Fleck finally figures out a way to express himself to the world, but can only do it through song, was the connective thread between the aborted stage show idea and the final, big-screen musical version.

“The goal of this movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people,” Phillips told the trade. “The inmates are running the asylum.”

The first movie ended with Arthur headed to Arkham, and in the second movie, he will meet Lee Quinzel, a fellow patient with whom he builds a special bond. Whereas the traditional Joker/Harley relationship was built around Joker manipulating his therapist and driving her mad, this new take isn’t quite so conniving.  

Originally created in Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn began her existence as little more than a foil for Joker. She took on a life of her own in the comics, particularly during DC’s 2011 “New 52” reboot. Harley got her own book during that era, written by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, and established many of the personality traits that have carried over into more modern adaptations of the character. Since 2011, she has appeared in three live-action movies — Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, and The Suicide Squad — and had her own acclaimed animated series on Max.

Warner Bros. will release Joker: Folie à Deux only in theaters on October 4.