'Joker 2' Released Date Revealed Amid 'Batgirl' Turmoil

Amid the flurry of strange news coming out of Warner Bros. Discovery this week is a release date for the Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. According to a report by Deadline, the movie is now slated for a theatrical release on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. This comes after the perplexing news that Batgirl will not be released at all, leading to some doubts about DC Comics adaptations in general.

Joker: Folie à Deux is the follow-up to the 2019 stand-alone Joker movie directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix. The R-rated movie was divisive in its time but undeniably successful, with a staggering 1.07 billion box office gross. It also earned Phoenix an Oscar for best actor and Hildur Guðnadóttir an Oscar for best original music score. Phillips revealed the sequel's title back in June when he posted a photo of the script on Instagram, but it looks like it still won't be out for quite some time.

Sources close to the production told Deadline that work on the movie will begin in earnest in December. Warner Bros. had previously ear-marked Oct. 4, 2024, for an unspecified DC Entertainment movie, but many fans expected it to be one of the inter-connected DCEU movies. By all appearances, this iteration of the Joker stands apart from Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa's Aquaman and so on.

Still, the future of the DCEU cinematic universe is in question in general. The studio did not provide any clarification about whether Henry Cavill will still be playing Superman at San Diego Comic-Con last month as many fans expected, and Ben Affleck seems to be finished playing Batman as well. Considering the latest news about actor Ezra Miller, some fans expect The Flash to be shelved as well.

Surprisingly, Warner Bros. announced that a different DC movie would be scrapped this week. On Tuesday, Deadline reported that Batgirl would not be released in any form despite the fact that it was nearly finished. Sources said that the studio decided to use the movie as a tax write-off rather than risk poor performance at the box office or even on streaming platforms.

In the meantime, The Flash is still due out in theaters on July 23, 2023. The next movie on the DCEU slate is Black Adam on Oct. 21, 2022, followed closely by Shazam! Fury of the Gods on Dec. 21, 2022. More news is expected from Warner Bros. Discovery later this week with its quarterly earning report.