Warner Bros. on Tuesday offered a glimpse of a highly anticipated sequel to Jokerwith Lady Gaga, at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas, the Hollywood studio seeking to capitalize on the success experienced last year by barbie.
Joker: Madness at Dthemby Todd Phillips, plows the furrow started by the controversial original which won an Oscar for its star Joaquin Phoenix.
THE Joker of 2019 offered the dark, violent story of Arthur Fleck, sworn enemy of Batman, dividing spectators by presenting a murderous villain as a hero, going so far as to arouse fears that he could inspire mass killings.
The sequel, which comes out in October and stars Lady Gaga, one of the world’s biggest pop stars, has been described as a musical.
Presenting the trailer, Todd Phillips called his latest production “a film where music is an essential element”, adding that in this the new Joker did not “diverge much from the first”.
“Arthur is weird and distant, all that, but he has music, a grace in him,” explained the director. “That was a big part of the dancing in the first film, so what we did didn’t seem too far off. It’s different but it makes sense when you see it,” Todd Phillips added.
Moonlight
The trailer shows the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) meeting Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) in an asylum, before the two plot their escape. Other sequences show him dancing romantically on a rooftop in the moonlight.
The major film industry convention CinemaCon is an opportunity for Hollywood studios to showcase their upcoming productions to theater owners around the world.
It takes place in a context of forecasts suggesting a low year, due in particular to the recent strikes of actors and screenwriters in Hollywood.
The sector is also struggling to emerge from five difficult years, marked in particular by the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of streaming.
Warner, however, enjoyed significant success with barbie, which raised $1.45 billion last year. But the conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, created through a merger in 2022, has seen its shares fall and experienced layoffs.
Other highly anticipated films
Warner’s presentation Tuesday also included footage from the highly anticipated sequel to the 1980s classic fantasy comedy Beetlejuice by Tim Burton, and Robert Pattinson’s promotion of a science fiction film from the director of Parasitethe South Korean Bong Joon-ho.
Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara presented Beetlejuice, Beetlejuicea sequel in which we find them, described by Tim Burton as “a strange family reunion”.
Bong Joon-ho, for his part, traveled to CinemaCon for the first time to promote a science fiction comedy, Mickey 17his first film since ParasitePalme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 and first non-English-speaking film to receive the Oscar for best film.
“With Bong as director, it was a no-brainer to go for it,” said Robert Pattinson, who plays several characters in the film, which opens in January.
The studio’s future offering also displays Horizona saga of westerns by Kevin Costner, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga by George Miller or the horror film Trap by M. Night Shyamalan.