Get ready to see Todd Phillips send in the clowns in Joker: Folie à Deux—the jukebox musical! Though we’ve long heard the DC Studios film starring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn and Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker will be a musical, we now know a bit more about the off-kilter romantic showdown.
Variety cites insider sources as revealing Joker 2 will be “mostly a jukebox musical,” with at least 15 covers of “very well-known” songs with room for original music. I mean they have Lady Gaga so one would hope some original music will be in the mix. Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, who won an Oscar for Best Original Score for 2019’s Joker, is also aboard the sequel, and Variety’s source notes her “haunting” musical cues will have a presence once more.
Among the cover songs is “That’s Entertainment” from The Band Wagon, a 1953 musical starring Judy Garland (which just so happens to open with the lyric “A clown with his pants falling down”). We can imagine that the music will harken mostly to old Broadway showtunes as opposed to a broader playlist of classic and modern hits like Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. There’s definitely an old Hollywood romance vibe to all the imagery we’ve seen of the duo in their dreamlike mad love story.
Joker: Folie à Deux from DC Studios Elseworlds is set for release October 4.
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