It's safe to say no one expected the recent announcement from Warner Bros. pictures that an origin film about The Joker is now in some form of early development. Rumored to be produced by the legendary Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas) with Todd Phillips (The Hangover) slated to direct and co-write along with Scott Silver (8 Mile), the Joker's first feature film as a headliner is said to be set in a Taxi Driver-like 1980s Gotham City, will depict how the Joker became a deformed, clown-like homicidal maniac, and will apparently not be part of the DC Extended Universe of films. Nor has there been confirmation whether Batman will be in the film, but if it isn't set in the DCEU, the part of Batman won't be played by Ben Affleck if the Dark Knight even appears in The Joker.This Joker movie concept begs a number of questions: Why do an origin story? Is it even a good idea? Will it work? An equally pertinent question is: What is the reasoning behind suddenly having two different Jokers on the silver screen at the same time? Sure, there have been multiple cinematic incarnations of Batman, but none of them co-existed simultaneously. The Batman franchise that began with Michael Keaton and ended with George Clooney was dormant for 8 years before Christopher Nolan's reboot Batman Begins. Ben Affleck didn't take over the role until Nolan's swansong The Dark Knight Rises had been gone from theaters for 4 years.Audiences just met the DCEU's official Joker, played by Jared Leto, in 2016's Suicide Squad. Leto will reportedly reprise the role three more times: in Suicide Squad 2, and alongside Margot Robbie in the Harley Quinn-centric bad girls team up film Gotham City Sirens, and in a Joker and Harley-focused film from the directors of Crazy, Stupid, Love. The Joker origin movie will apparently be unrelated to all of those DCEU films. Which brings us back to the question: Why have two Jokers in DC movies - and what if it doesn't stop there?To find an answer, we might look to DC Films President Geoff Johns and what he has helped establish in DC Comics' hugely successful publishing initiative DC Rebirth. In short: in current continuity, there are three Jokers running around the DC Universe. This was set up in Johns' summer 2015 Justice League event Darkseid War. In that story, Batman gained control of the Mobius Chair belonging to the New God Metron. Able to tap into a vast repository of multiversal knowledge, Batman asked the Mobius Chair "What is the Joker's true name?" He didn't get the answer he was looking for and instead, the Chair's response was a shocking reveal.
THE THREE JOKERS IN DC REBIRTH
Batman learned there are three Jokers in the DC Universe. This was made possible by the machinations of Doctor Manhattan of Watchmen. It turns out Doctor Manhattan had stolen ten years from the DC Universe and was responsible for its transition from the New 52 continuity that began in 2011 to the current DC Rebirth continuity. Somehow, the Joker was split into three versions of himself: the original incarnation of the Joker created by Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson and Bob Kane, the 1980s version of the Joker Alan Moore and Brian Bolland essayed in The Killing Joke, and the modern New 52 version of the Joker primarily written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Greg Capullo. They are all the Joker, with all of their murderous insanity intact, but their histories are different because they're from different DC Universe continuities, yet they all currently exist in the DC Rebirth continuity.
THE TWO JOKERS IN DC MOVIES
If we cast aside the previous cinematic versions of the Joker played by Cesar Romero in 1966, Jack Nicholson in 1989's Batman, and by Heath Ledger in 2008's The Dark Knight (as well as Mark Hamill's beloved animated Joker) as entirely separate from the current DCEU cinematic franchise, we are looking at two different Jokers simultaneously existing in movies said to be unrelated to each other. When Ben Affleck's Dark Knight fights the Joker, as we saw in Suicide Squad, it's the Joker played by Jared Leto as they are both the 'official DCEU versions' of the characters. At this point, it's anyone's guess if there will be a Batman in the Todd Phillips Joker origin movie, and who will portray him.
DC has long been proud of his 'multiverse' concept, where different incarnations of their superheroes can exist in different media platforms simultaneously. For instance, while Henry Cavill plays the Man of Steel in the feature films, Supergirl on The CW has its own, very different version of Superman played by Tyler Hoechlin. There's also a 'proto-Joker' on FOX's Gotham series played by Cameron Monaghan, though it's still not certain if his character Jerome will truly transform into the Joker on that show.
However, this will be the first time two different versions of a character will exist in the movies (and not a past/future version of the same character in the same universe like both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy playing different ages of the same Charles Xavier in X-Men:Days of Future Past). 2007's planned Justice League: Mortal film directed by George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) was scrapped in part because Christopher Nolan vetoed the idea of a completely different Batman than Christian Bale's in a movie while The Dark Knight Trilogy was still happening in theaters.
TOO MANY JOKERS?
To give the Devil his due, the Joker is the single most famous and iconic super villain in comic book history. Like Superman and Batman, the Joker is identifiable all over the world. It's reasonable to say most people have heard of the Joker and can cite his basic traits: his ghoulish smile, his evil laugh, and his status as a homicidal lunatic who is Batman's greatest adversary. With the success of Suicide Squad, comprised of its array of the "Worst Heroes Ever," and the burgeoning trend of "anti-hero" comic book movies like Venom starring Tom Hardy and Black Adam starring Dwayne Johnson in pre-production, it's not surprising that DC Films would go all the way and make a villain-centric comic book movie about the greatest villain in their pantheon. After all, they're in the movie business to make green, and we don't just mean the color of the Joker's hair.
DC looks like they're taking a page from FOX's X-Men franchise. While the core X-Men films about Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) are set in one version of X-Men continuity, the recent films Logan and Deadpool are X-Men films that exist in their own continuities. Logan was set in the possible future of an alternate universe where the X-Men are dead, while Deadpool is in its own continuity set in modern day but with cameos by X-Men like Colossus (Stefan Capicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). X-Men: New Mutants, currently in production, won't be related to any of the prior films either. Meanwhile, television's Legion and The Gifted are set in their own X-Men universes unrelated to any of the others. Confusing? Sure, but fans are enjoying each different X-Men franchise regardless.
With Geoff Johns overseeing every film produced under a DC banner starring DC's characters, the question remains of whether he will have the movies follow the comics' lead and introduce a Joker trifecta. The place to find a third and different cinematic Joker might just be the Batgirl film under the auspices of Joss Whedon. Batgirl is said to be based upon the New 52 comics that follow The Killing Joke's continuity, which features Barbara Gordon as a survivor of an assault by the Joker that left her paralyzed. Whether or not Batgirl will take place outside the DCEU as well might mean that Jared Leto won't play the Joker that attacked Barbara Gordon. The Joker, if he's seen in Batgirl and not played by Leto or whoever stars in Todd Phillips' Joker, would then be the third Joker concurrent in a DC movie. The DC movies will then become just like the DC Rebirth comics, with three movie Jokers, and Warner Bros. laughing all the way to the bank.