Lady Gaga confirms ‘Joker 2’ role opposite Joaquin Phoenix
Singer will appear alongside Joaquin Phoenix’s maniac clown in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’
By Daniel Kreps
Lady Gaga has finally confirmed that she will co-star alongside Joaquin Phoenix in the upcoming Joker sequel.
A day after Warner. Bros announced that Joker: Folie à Deux will arrive on 4 October, 2024 — exactly five years after the first film’s release — the singer affirmed her long-rumoured co-starring role in the movie in a tweet:
The teaser is soundtracked by a big band rendition of the pop standard ‘Cheek to Cheek’, a song that lends its title to Lady Gaga’s first duet album with Tony Bennett. (Similarly ironic, the last time Gaga appeared on the big screen, 2021’s House of Gucci, it was alongside another Joker, Jared Leto.)
However, Gaga did not reveal which character she’ll be playing in the upcoming sequel: It’s rumored — but unconfirmed — that she will star as the Joker universe’s version of Harley Quinn, a prison psychiatrist who, after treating the Joker, joins him in his chaotic crime sprees; the film’s subtitle, Folie à Deux, is a French term for an identical mental disorder that affects two different people. (Margot Robbie portrays the same character in the DC Cinematic Universe, which is separate from both Joker and The Batman [which also has its own Joker, played by Barry Keoghan].)
Also unconfirmed — but heightened by the teaser — are rumors that there are musical elements to the Todd Phillips-directed sequel, as compared to its gritty, Scorsese-inspired predecessor.
News of the Joker sequel’s release date in part softened the blow to DC movie fans following news that the already-filmed Batgirl movie won’t be released in any capacity following a shift in strategy at the recently merged Warner Bros Discovery.
This article originally appeared on Rolling Stone.