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There’s not a contract for us to even write a sequel, never approached Joaquin Phoenix for it: director Todd Phillips refutes rumours about a sequel to ‘Joker’

Joaquin Phoenix and Todd Phillips had everyone eating out of their hands after their film Joker released to resounding box office success and critical acclaim. The film, is a spinoff on Batman’s arch-nemesis Joker’s backstory and has become one of the frontrunners for the Academy Awards with its stellar performance from the lead actor. Following its release, the internet was flooded with theories of its sequel; however, director Phillips has refuted any such claims. 

While speaking to an entertainment portal, Phillips denied the reports of a sequel and said, “While Joaquin and I have talked about it, and while touring the world with Warner Bros executives — going to Toronto, and Venice, and other places — of course, we’re sitting at dinner and they’re saying, ‘So, have you thought about…?’. But, talking about contracts, there’s not a contract for us to even write a sequel, we’ve never approached Joaquin to be in a sequel.”

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Apparently, all these speculations started when another entertainment website reported that Warner Bros. was looking at a Joker sequel as Phillips had a meeting with studio chairman Toby Emmerich on October 7 to ask for the "rights to develop a portfolio of DC characters’ origin stories." Joker is the first R-rated film to cross $1 billion at the box office and has been highly appreciated as well. Talking about the moolah, Phillips said, “Well, a movie doesn’t make a billion dollars and they don’t talk about a sequel. Joaquin and I have publicly said we’ve been talking about a sequel since week two of shooting because it’s a fun thing to talk about. But the article was referring to other things than that that were just frankly untrue. I don’t know how it gets started, if it’s some assistant trying to gain street cred with a writer.”

Well, that’s that then, Joker has been a terrific piece of cinema and the way the current trend is going it comes as a huge sigh of relief that it will not be tarnished by a sequel. Thank you, Todd Phillips!

(Source: Indiewire/Hollywood Reporter) 

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