Joker: Folie à Deux[a] is a 2024 American jukebox musical[10] legal drama film directed by Todd Phillips from a screenplay he co-wrote with Scott Silver.

In the film, Arthur awaits trial for his crimes at Arkham State Hospital where he develops a romantic relationship with another inmate, Lee, who is obsessed with his Joker persona.

Although Joker was initially conceived as a standalone film, its success at the box-office sparked interest in a sequel, which was announced in June 2022 with Gaga and Beetz joining later that year.

At a music therapy session, Arthur meets Harley "Leanne" Quinzel, who claims that she grew up in the same neighborhood he did, had an abusive father who died in a car crash, and was imprisoned after burning down her parents' apartment building.

As the foreperson reads the verdict, a car bomb explodes outside the courthouse, killing and injuring numerous attendees and scarring half of Harvey's face.

Phillips preferred to focus on how Arthur's breakdown captivated Gotham, being interested in examining how the very idea of entertainment went from movies and television to whatever scandal the news currently air.

This led Phillips and Silver to the idea of including Harley Quinn, a female villain associated with the Joker and first introduced in Batman: The Animated Series, to serve that purpose.

[20] In early June 2022, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy took over as co-heads of Warner Bros.'s movie studio, with the greenlighting of a sequel to Joker being one of their first actions.

However, Christopher Nolan did not allow the filmmakers to go through the idea as he mandated that only Heath Ledger's version of the Joker from his film The Dark Knight (2008) should have a Glasgow smile.

By the time Joker: Folie à Deux entered development, Nolan and his company Syncopy Inc. no longer worked with Warner Bros. after disagreements with their release treatment for Tenet (2020) by quickly sending it to Max, having moved on since 2021 to Universal Pictures to direct Oppenheimer (2023), hence allowing Phillips and his crew to implement the idea in the film with the patient who encounters Arthur.

[59][60] Gaga accepted the role seeing the part as a new challenge that she had not done previously in either A Star is Born (2018) or House of Gucci (2021), as well as recognizing the similarities between the film's focus on identity and duality and her own experience having a second life in her celebrity singer persona.

[62] Beetz was confirmed to be reprising her role the following month, alongside the cast additions of Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and Jacob Lofland.

[64] In October, Harry Lawtey joined the cast in what Deadline Hollywood reported as a "big role",[26] later revealed to be that of Harvey Dent by the film's official trailer.

[25] Lawtey taped an audition for Phillips, consisting of a recorded self-talk between himself and a friend of his, just as HBO renewed Industry (2020–present) in Fall 2022, not expecting to get the role, for which he had no information.

A couple of weeks later, Lawtey had a video call with Phillips, during which he offered him the role of Dent straight away even though his team assumed it was going to be a note session for a second read.

He was also given an extraordinary level of autonomy and power over the final cut, allowing him to bypass any oversight from the brand's gatekeepers and distancing himself from it though Gunn supported the film.

[4][3][20] According to some sources, while backed by FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith, Alcon Entertainment put up Village Roadshow's portion from the first film with an eagerness to have a stake in the production.

[93][94] Several outlets compared the film's opening weekend gross to that of other recent high-profile box office bombs The Marvels (2023) and Madame Web (2024), noting that Folie à Deux's own debut made less than either.

The website's consensus reads: "Joaquin Phoenix's eponymous Joker takes the stand in a sequel that dances around while the story remains still, although Lady Gaga's wildcard energy gives Folie à Deux some verve.

[116] In his four stars out of five review for The Daily Telegraph, Robbie Collin lauded the film for its musical numbers and Phillips for "stay[ing] true to the project's nihilistic ethos," while noting Lady Gaga was "magnetic but underused".

[117] Rafa Sales Ross of The Playlist echoed similar thoughts on the use of Gaga but enjoyed Phoenix "in a much more contained turn, a welcome change to those put off by the constant, annoyingly loud cackling that permeated much of the previous installment".

He praised the opening, the supporting cast and the "real spark" in the first encounter between the two protagonists, but wrote that "the whole movie finally turns out to be oppressively, claustrophobically and repetitively becalmed in that oddly unreal Gotham-universe jail with Phoenix and Gaga kept apart for long periods".

Bradshaw found that "Phoenix's own performance is as single-note as before, though certainly as forceful and his screen presence is potent" and that Gaga "brings a sly and manipulative malice" to her character.

[119] In a mixed review for KQED-FM, Jack Coyle wrote: "Laudable as the intentions of Folie à Deux may be, it feels thoughtfully but tiresomely stuck in the past".

[120] In a negative review for ABC News, Luke Goodsell wrote: "That Joker was intended as a standalone movie is evident from the new sequel ... a quasi-musical courtroom drama that has little interest in advancing any kind of story.

[122] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times stated the film was "such a dour, unpleasant slog that it is hard to know why it was made or for whom," and that "Phoenix's sour frown, the movie's barely-there story, its unrelenting grimness and its commitment to forced eccentricity suggest that no one involved was really stoked to make it".

[123] David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave a scathing review, stating the film "perversely denies audiences everything they've been conditioned to want from it; gently at first, and then later with the unmistakable hostility of a knife to the gut," and that "its turgid symphony of unexpected cameos, mournful cello solos, and implied sexual violence is too dissonant to appreciate even on its own terms".

[124] Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic lamented that the film has "nothing interesting to say about the challenge of fame [and feels like] punish[ment] for the crime of wanting to be entertained".

[125] Justin Clark of Slant Magazine gave the film one out of four, writing that "Folie à Deux's attempt at showcasing cleverness, verve, or engagement is held cruelly underwater by staid direction, shoddy emotional plotting, a gleeful sense of cruelty, and a grave nihilism that makes Zack Snyder's work seem like a season of Bluey".

[40] A source directly involved in the film acknowledged that no one could reach Phillips, and that his rejection of fan expectations sealed its failure and harmed the DC brand.