Joker 2 is apparently a $200 million jukebox musical

What do you get when you take a $60 million comic book-based Taxi Driver riff, and transform it into one of the oddest (and grimmest) billion-dollar box office movies of all time? Exactly what you deserve, it turns out—at least, if what you deserve is the phrase “Joker 2 is now a $200 million jukebox musical” somehow coming true.

This is per Variety, which ran a report today making it clear that Todd Phillips’ various claims that this October’s Joker: Folie à Deux would be a musical were not just some kind of odd jape of his own, revealing that “reinterpretations” of at least 15 well-known and existing songs will get themselves belted out when the movie hits theaters. Details on individual tracks are still being held back (besides an old Judy Garland standard, “That’s Entertainment,” which is apparently in the mix). More notably, it’s not yet clear how many of these tunes will be handled by the film’s stars, Lady Gaga (a professional musician), and Joaquin Phoenix (who, amazingly, does not have a band, even though he seems like exactly the kind of guy who would, right?), as opposed to the rest of its cast. (Whose number include a returning Zazie Beetz, whose character, amazingly, survived the first movie, plus newcomers Brendan Gleeson and Catherine Keener.)

The Variety piece also served as a reminder of just how much money Philips (and Warner Bros.) are throwing at this movie, with its $200 million budget more than triple what the studio spent on the original film. Which, to be fair, made crazy good money back in 2019; of the nine films to break the billion-dollar mark in that hallmark year, it was the only one not to have come with Disney’s then-invincible stamp of approval. Also not clear: Whether Joker 2 will feature any original songs of its own, kicking this thing even further into full-blown musical territory, or whether it’ll be content to literally just play the hits.