If The Joker didn’t make you face-palm enough already, get your palm and face ready once more.
The Hollywood Reporter has sources that are saying that the only reason why Warner Brothers wants to sign Martin Scorsese to a producer role on The Joker is because they believe that he would be able to bring aboard his five-time collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio to star in the lead.
But, wait, you might say, isn’t Jared Leto the new Joker? And didn’t he just become the new Joker with last year’s Suicide Squad? And they wouldn’t cast the 42-year old DiCaprio in the origin story for the 45-year-old Leto’s Joker, would they?
The answer to those questions are yes, yes, and god I hope not. No, if this project goes through, it will be telling the story of another Joker. And, if Brendan Schaub, friend to Todd Feldman, who agent to The Joker‘s writer/director Todd Phillips, this version will be a street-tough, “Brooklyn” kid who was made fun of due to his permanent smile, which isn’t quite the version we saw in Suicide Squad.
There are so many red flags to this story that it could be a Communist country. But even though friend of an agent of a director is a silly path of confirm a rumor, it is a confirmation. So, it appears that this alternate Joker story is really in the works.
Which begs the question, what the heck is Warner Brothers thinking? I mean, yes, the comic books have been supporting alternate versions of their characters for decades. There has been Vampire Batman, a Victorian-era Batman, one that met Harry Houdini, even a Batman that was also Green Lantern. But all of these alternate takes came after years and years of establishing the main version. The DC Extended Universe is still in its infancy, and it has been a rough delivery so far. Wonder Woman is the first film of the DCEU that truly succeeded as a film both critically and financially. That’s a great thing to build on, but not one to start rolling out alternate versions of the DCEU fare.
More on this as it happens.
