Joker: Folie à Deux director reveals original sequel idea involved Joaquin Phoenix in live Broadway show

Joker: Folie à Deux might be a movie musical, but director Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix have revealed that their upcoming Joker sequel's origins are rooted in a wild idea that would've included way more jazz hands — and on Broadway, to boot.

Phoenix recalled in a new interview that the initial idea for the film (which also introduces Lady Gaga as famed villainess Harley Quinn) came to him in a dream, after he won an Oscar for playing Arthur Fleck — an aspiring comedian whose isolation from society leads him to wreak havoc on Gotham City — in Phillips' 2019 original.

“Todd was in the wings talking to me through a headset,” Phoenix told Variety of his dream, which also involved him playing Fleck on stage, singing and telling jokes in costume, in front of a live New York City audience. “I woke up feeling elated and called him, hoping he’d want to do a show with me.”

The outlet confirmed that he and Phillips eventually discussed bringing a version of the act to Broadway, but the coronavirus 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?” Phillips added. “Then we thought about doing it at the Carlyle as sort of a smaller thing. But COVID hit.”

The stage-based idea never came to fruition, but it did lay the foundation for Joker: Folie à Deux as a musical production. Set two years after the first movie, the sequel picks up with Fleck (Phoenix) locked up inside Arkham Asylum, where he meets and forms a chaotic bond with fellow patient Harleen "Lee" Quinzel (Gaga).

Variety reported that the movie spans their relationship, and includes a "variety-show sequence that finds Phoenix and Gaga portraying a homicidal Sonny & Cher," as glimpsed in the movie's first trailer earlier this year. The trailer also teased musical moments featured in the movie, with the characters' musical expression playing a key role in the plot's development.

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“The goal of this movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people,” Phillips observed. “The inmates are running the asylum.”

Phillips also noted that he has no plans for a third Joker movie (or to make his previously announced Hulk Hogan-centered movie) after Folie à Deux. “It was fun to play in this sort of sandbox for two movies, but I think we’ve said what we wanted to say in this world," Phillips said.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Phillips and distributor Warner Bros. for additional comment.

Joker: Folie à Deux hits theaters on Oct. 4, following its world premiere at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.