The first trailer poster for the upcoming Joker movie starring Joaquin Phoenix have been unveiled.
Director and screenwriter Todd Phillips shared the image via Instagram yesterday (April 2) and announced that a trailer would follow. Check them both out below:
Repost from #ToddPhillips: Teaser trailer tomorrow. #JokerMovie – in theaters October 4. pic.twitter.com/v3xiwnlKCn
— Joker Movie (@jokermovie) April 2, 2019
The trailer shows Phoenix as a struggling street performer taking care of his elderly mother, before being driven to madness and crime by the cruelty of others. As he becomes the Joker, he concludes: “I used to think that my life was a tragedy. Now I realise that it’s a comedy.”
The Joker origin movie – not to be confused with the Jared Leto film of the same name, which looks to have been put on hold – is the first in a series of DC-based movies that are independent of the shared DC Extended Universe (DCEU). It tells the story of the Joker (Phoenix) as a failed stand-up comedian who becomes a psychopathic criminal mastermind after going insane.
Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Douglas Hodge, and Marc Maron star in the film.
Maron, who portrays Ted Marco in the upcoming movie, told NME last month that despite being formerly critical of comic book movies, he’s confident about this particular reboot.
“I think it’s a very interesting approach to this world,” Maron said. “I’ve been somewhat judgemental when it comes to comic book movies and I’ve got a little pushback in the press for being a hypocrite. Whatever I think, if you get a call and someone says, ‘Hey do you wanna do a scene with Robert De Niro and Joaquin Phoenix?’ your principals fall to the wayside.
“If it’s relative to what I think of Marvel movies then it’s like, ‘Yeah, of course I’m gonna do that’. Oddly, it’s not that kind of movie. The approach that Todd Phillips has taken is more of an origin story and a character study of a mentally ill person that becomes The Joker.”
He added: “It’s more of an intimate and gritty movie with a very specific scope. It’s going to be really interesting to see how it comes out.”
Joker is released in the UK on October 4, 2019.