‘Joker: Folie à Deux’: Zazie Beetz in Negotiations to Return
According to Deadline, Emmy nominee Zazie Beetz is currently in negotiations with Warner Bros. to join the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux. The actress would be reprising her role from the 2019 billion-dollar movie.
Todd Phillips is back as director and co-writer (along with Scott Silver), with Joaquin Phoenix playing Arthur Fleck once again. Lady Gaga is joining the sequel, reportedly playing Harley Quinn. Beetz’s character was named Sophie Dumond. She was a single mother struggling to live in Gotham City, and who lived in the same building as Arthur Fleck. Fleck dreamed about a relationship with her that never came to fruition in real life.
The sequel will reportedly take place mostly inside Arkham Asylum. Fleck/The Joker was found to be locked away in the final scene of Joker, and the movie never made it explicitly clear if he’d been incarcerated following the events of the movie, or if he had been there all along. It’s very possible that the sequel will not answer that question either, following a similar path to how Blade Runner 2049 avoided the question of whether or not Deckard was a replicant.
Details on Beetz’s character return are unclear at this point. The character could either visit Fleck at the prison on a regular basis, or just appear in his dreams. Another alternative is that Fleck escapes from Arkham and finds her in Gotham City. If the studio didn’t start conversations with her until the movie was officially greenlit, Beetz’s part may not be integral to the story, meaning they could make the movie without her.
Interestingly enough, the sequel will be a musical, which might have been part of the appeal for Lady Gaga, who could also be involved in the score. Filming is scheduled to begin this December, with the movie targeting an October 4, 2024, release date. The first movie, in addition to becoming the most successful DC film of all time, was also nominated for ten Academy Awards, and ended up winning two of them, Best Original Score (Hildur Guðnadóttir) and Best Actor (Phoenix).
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
