The Batman Director Matt Reeves Speaks Out on Crossover With Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker

March 3, 2022, 10:50pm

The Batman director Matt Reeves explains why Joker isn’t part of the Batverse — and why Robert Pattinson’s Batman and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker won’t crossover. Set in year two of Bruce Wayne’s (Pattinson) crusade as a vengeful vigilante, the reboot takes place in present-day Gotham City. Filmmaker Todd Phillips’ Batman-less spinoff Joker, about failed comedian Arthur Fleck’s (Phoenix) descent into madness, is set decades earlier in 1981 and has its own young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson). In 2019, Pattinson confirmed The Batman is in “a different world” than Joker, and now Reeves is speaking out about why it was never the plan for the two films to share the same Gotham:

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“I was finishing the Planet of the Apes movies when I first came on board [Batman], in 2017. It’s been five years in the making,” Reeves told Total Film. “When I was working on the script, and got deep into the script, Joker hadn’t come out yet. I didn’t know what Joker was or what it was going to be.”

Joker is an origin story for Fleck, revealing his transformation into the criminal mastermind who sparks an anarchist revolution that culminates in the deaths of Martha (Carrie Louise Putrello) and Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) in the early ’80s. In The Batman, the infamous Wayne murders happen 20 years before current events — orphaning Reeves’ Bruce Wayne around the year 2002.

“I became aware of [Joker] once we were very deep into [The Batman], and the fact that they were grounding things in a way that was reminiscent of things that we were doing, that wasn’t planned,” Reeves said. “Joker was always meant to be a very specific standalone that Joaquin and Todd were doing. There was never really any discussion of crossover.”

In The Batman, the Dark Knight detective investigates a mystery involving early versions of Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), Riddler (Paul Dano), and Penguin (Colin Farrell).

In The Batman, the Dark Knight detective investigates a mystery involving early versions of Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), Riddler (Paul Dano), and Penguin (Colin Farrell). Despite recent reports Phillips and Phoenix will reteam for a Joker 2, studio Warner Bros. has yet to officially greenlight a sequel.

Starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as GCPD’s James Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson, Jayme Lawson as mayoral candidate Bella Reál, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and Colin Farrell as Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot, The Batman is now playing exclusively in theaters.

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