Joker Origin Story Movie Announced [Podcast]

Welcome to another edition of The Playlist Podcast, a discussion about film news and other film and television related items.

On this episode, I’m joined by Playlist Editor-in-Chief Rodrigo Perez to discuss the news about the Joker origin story, set to be directed by Todd Phillips (“The Hangover,” “Old School“) and produced by Martin Scorsese.

This Joker film is meant to be a stand-alone entry, and have no connection to the current DC Extended Universe. This means that Jared Leto will not be reprising his role from “Suicide Squad” as the Clown Prince of Crime, and a new actor will be taking up the mantle. We bring up a variety of different tinfoil hat theories as to why this has gotten the green light (such as DC covering their bases to continue onwards in case of “Justice League” fallout). We also discuss the online reactions to the film, which suggest something we’ve been talking about ad nauseam this summer — franchise fatigue.

When we hop on mic for these “state of the industry” talks, usually we’ve had at least a day to process the news in question and form a discussion around it. For this Joker standalone film, we took to the mic less than an hour after it was announced, so forgive us if we sound shocked and baffled.

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