Joaquin Phoenix Reportedly Getting Staggering Amount To Return For 'Joker 2'

Joker is one of the best comic book-inspired films released in recent years, and one that completely reinvented the formula for DC. Given the critical and commercial success of the film, it’s no surprise that a sequel eventually entered development.

Joker: Folie á Deux was officially announced back in June. Todd Phillips is set to return as writer alongside Scott Silver, and rumours suggest that the film could in fact be a musical starring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. Phillips previously directed Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born so he knows a thing or two about incorporating songs into a movie. Whilst we don’t know for sure if Joaquin Phoenix is going to demonstrate his singing chops, we do know how much the actor is being paid for the film.

Speaking of DC, check out the trailer for Black Adam ahead of the film’s release on 21 October.

According to Variety, Phoenix is set to earn a whopping $20 million (£16,700,000) for reprising his role as Arthur Fleck which is a huge step up from his previous paycheck. For Joker, Phoenix earnt just $4.5 million. I say ‘just,’ $4.5 million is an obscene amount of money but you understand the point I’m making.

As I’m sure you know, Phoenix won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Joker so he certainly had some leverage when it came to negotiating his paycheck for the film’s sequel. It’s sort of ironic that Arthur Fleck is impoverished yet Phoenix is quite the opposite, but that’s just Hollywood I guess.

We don’t know much about what the film’s plot entails but a quick Google will tell you that Folie á Deux (or folly of two) is a psychological disorder, also known as shared psychotic disorder or shared psychosis. The rare condition refers to two people being affected by the same delusional belief or hallucination.

This would certainly fit in with the Harley Quinn / Lady Gaga rumour as Quinn could be the second person pulled into Fleck’s troubled world. There’s no official release date for Joker: Folie á Deux just yet so we’ve probably got a good while to wait before more is revealed.