Joaquin Phoenix will play Joker (yes, Joker!) in DC’s origin story…

It’s official: Warner Bros and DC weren’t just having a laugh with that Joaquin Phoenix/Joker movie. The studios released a joint statement confirming Phoenix will play The Joker and The Hangover‘s Todd Phillips will direct a film that is “meant to be different from comic book superhero movies”.

This Joker origin story will be an “exploration of a man disregarded by society [that] is not only a gritty character study, but also a broader cautionary tale”, Warner Bros said in a statement.

© Warner Bros. The Joker and Harley Quinn

No title has been released yet, but there may be more news on that front when Warner Bros holds its annual presentation at Comic-Con International next weekend. Production on this Joker movie is set to begin this September ahead of a possible 2019 release.

Phoenix’s Joker is expected to be a standalone incarnation of the character, not connected to the wider DC Extended Universe established by the Justice League film.

The iconic Batman supervillain role earned Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar for 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” Jared Leto played The Joker onscreen in 2016’s “Suicide Squad” and will star in his own, still-untitled standalone film. Zach Galifianakis voiced The Joker in 2017’s  “The Lego Batman Movie.

Kind of the beauty of the Joker is he has no origin story. But the ace Bat-baddie has been overexposed in numerous film and TV projects.

And no one asked Culturedemandsgeeks about greenlighting this movie. There’s already a backlash at the time from numerous online sources and the hatred just boils over with “The Depressing Inevitability of another Joker Movie.”

Isn’t it time to let the Batman villain rest for awhile?”