Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix explore their wild side in the psychological thriller Joker: Folie à Deux, a film whose idea literally spawned from a dream. Directed by Todd Phillips, the sequel now promoted to the audience is packaged as a musical but in hindsight, the original idea was completely different. We would have witnessed Joaquin Phoenix go full Broadway if the initial plan had worked out.
Phoenix plays lead Arthur Fleck, whose isolation from society led to a series of disasters unfolding in Gotham City in the 2019 original film. After the actor won an Oscar for the role, he dreamt of taking Fleck on the Broadway stage, where he performed in front of a live audience. “I woke up feeling elated and called him (Director Todd Phillips), hoping he’d want to do a show with me,” Phoenix told Variety.
The idea was considered positively by the makers until the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way. “When we started really thinking about it, we realized it takes four years to put something like that together. And is Joaquin really going to give six months of his life to do that every night onstage? Then we thought about doing it at the Carlyle as sort of a smaller thing.
But COVID hit,” said Phillips. Though going Broadway never materialized, it ended up laying a strong foundation for the musical production of Joker’s sequel. Set two years after the events of the original film, Joker: Folie à Deux will feature Fleck locked up inside Arkham Asylum, where he meets Har.