Joker: Folie á Deux is failing to rake in the kind of massive box office performance that its predecessor did, and it’s also going over pretty poorly with both critics and fans. Following that icy reception, some are wondering whether there will be a third Joker movie. While it’s impossible to rule anything out indefinitely, the answer right now seems to be a pretty definitive no.
Director Todd Phillips, who made both the first Joker and this sequel, told The Hollywood Reporter that a third one doesn’t really seem like it’s in the cards.
“It’s not really where this movie is headed for me,” he told the publication. “I feel like my time in the DC Universe was these two films.”
He said something similar to Variety: “It was fun to play in this sort of sandbox for two movies, but I think we’ve said what we wanted to say in this world.”
Given the movie’s poorer than expected box office performance, it seems like this might be the moment to call it quits on the Joker experiment. There are also some textual reasons that make a third movie unlikely.
Warning: there are spoilers below for Joker: Folie á Deux
In addition to the fact that Phillips has no interest in making a third film, Arthur Fleck, Joaquin Phoenix’s main character, also doesn’t make it out of the second installment alive. In the film’s closing moments, he is murdered by a young man who may go on to be the real Joker, and we realize that much of what we saw at the end of the first movie was all in his head. So Arthur Fleck’s story is over, and with it, the Joker franchise might be as well.
