Despite the obvious tie to the DC comic canon, Todd Phillips had never intended his version of the Joker to interact with the Dark Knight. In fact, both The Hangover director and Joaquin Phoenix had trepidations about being a part of a comic book movie at all. Even before the film released, Phillips acknowledged that the primary reason he transitioned to the genre was so that he could get his character study – a more or less dead corner of filmmaking – off the ground.
With that said, it’s almost ridiculous to think that Arthur Fleck would bring his doomsday-mentality to Matt Reeves’ The Batman. But for all of those in denial, the next Caped Crusader, Robert Pattinson, put the final nail on that coffin himself.
Speaking with Yahoo! about the rumors of Phoenix’s involvement, the 33-year-old actor quickly shut down the speculation.
“It’s kind of a different world,” he said.
Then, the Twilight star went on to admit that he hasn’t yet seen the controversial film – though he’s apparently eager to:
“I might watch it tonight! Joaquin is the best — he’s awesome in everything,” Pattinson added.
Even though Joker hasn’t been blessed with Pattinson’s seal of approval just yet, it hasn’t had any problems finding an audience on its own. So far, the movie’s cleared the $600 million benchmark worldwide, bulldozing through the measly earnings of X-Men: Dark Phoenix and scoring the biggest opening weekend for Warner Bros. since Justice League.
Of course, we’ll have a long while to wait before we see if Reeves’ upcoming comic book movie will keep that momentum going. And as of right now, we don’t even know everyone who will be sharing the screen with Pattinson.
This week has been rather revealing, however; we most recently found out that There Will Be Blood‘s Paul Dano will be playing the Riddler, and that Zoë Kravitz will be taking on the role of Catwoman. Hopefully this trend of casting will continue to prosper in the coming weeks, so stay tuned to We Got This Covered for more updates on The Batman, which is expected to hit theaters on June 25th, 2021.