New “Joker: Folie à Deux” Teasers Unveil Gotham’s Killer New Crooners
“There’s a romance to Arthur in the first film, like when he dances in the bathroom, Arthur has music in him, and that was a logical leaping off point for the sequel,” says Joker: Folie à Deux co-writer/director Todd Phillips about Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) at the start of a new featurette on the upcoming sequel’s music.
“We started talking about music very early on,” star Joaquin Phoenix adds. “We wanted it to feel dirty in a way that people don’t typically see. We had to perform live and perform the songs that maybe weren’t the most beautiful renditions…but there was something very exciting about that.”
So what are the songs? The Folie à Deux team isn’t telling, but Phillips reveals that the film’s music is stuff that Arthur would have grown up listening to, songs that his mom (played in Joker by Frances Conroy) would have played.
“There’s music within him; it’s messy, chaotic, it’s expressing the complexity of love, and in a way brings Arthur to life,” says co-star Lady Gaga, someone who knows a thing or two about a tune. Gaga plays the Joker’s main squeeze, Harley Quinn, and her casting gave the music-mad sequel a multitalented superstar who will lend her very real vocal chops to the story of their romance.
We learned, via Variety, that Folie á Deux will unveil at least 15 reinterpretations of well-known songs, with a few possible new songs thrown into the mix. “Details regarding who would pen the tracks or sing the numbers are unknown,” Variety‘s Clayton Davis wrote. “We do know, according to sources, Hildur Guðnadóttir, the Oscar-winning composer of the first Joker film, is said to ‘infuse her distinctive, haunting [music] cues’ into each number.”
Along with this new featurette, we also got a fresh teaser, giving us a new glimpse at the return of Phoenix’s sad sack comedian turned killer clown. The new look pits reality versus the Joker’s delusion and Gotham’s madness. The fact is that Arthur, posing as Gotham’s representative for the downtrodden, is actually a murderer. “His depraved acts of violence led to rioting by his followers, and they’re still willing to commit acts of violence in his name,” the teaser reveals. We have a hunch Arthur won’t spend any time in Folie à Deux repenting, but he will be carrying a tune, on or off key.
It’s a bold choice to pivot from the overwhelming successful formula of the original Joker, a realist, decidedly dark, R-rated psychological portrait of a man succumbing to his own madness, into a jukebox musical. Yet, the original Joker was bold in its brutally unheroic, Batman-less vision of a Gotham careening off the rails while an isolated, angry man was dancing in the rain.
Check out the new teaser below. Joker: Folie à Deux arrives on October 4.
Put on a happy face. Joker: Folie à Deux – only in theaters and @imax, October 4. #JokerMovie #FilmedForIMAX pic.twitter.com/CqDld31gVg
— Joker Movie (@jokermovie) September 3, 2024
For more on Joker: Folie à Deux, check out these stories:
The Second “Joker: Folie à Deux” Trailer Reveals Gotham’s Most Explosive New Couple
First “Joker: Folie à Deux” Trailer Unleashes a Twisted Duet
Featured image: Caption: (L to r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck/Joker and LADY GAGA as Lee Quinzel in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
