Martin Scorsese To Produce ‘Gritty’ Joker Movie Based On His Origin Story

Warner Bros. is making a new movie entirely on The Joker and his origin story and it will be produced by Martin Scorsese. DC is only in the early stages of The Joker movie, but already have Scorsese on board as well as writer/director Todd Phillips from “The Hangover” fame and co-writer Scott Silver who helped write “8 Mile” and “The Fighter.” The movie will be much different than current CGI-heavy comic book movies and will be a “gritty and grounded hard-boiled crime film” set in the early 1980s, an era that Scorsese is familiar as we have seen with “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” and “The King Of Comedy.”

Jared Leto will continue to be The Joker for “Suicide Squad 2” and the Harley Quinn movie, but the new Joker spinoff will cast a different actor. The upcoming movie will be the first film under a new, yet to be named banner where Warner Bros can expand on the vast library of DC Comics properties and create unique storylines with different actors playing the iconic characters. Scorsese is already looking at possible actors to play The Joker.

You’d be foolish to have doubt towards any project that involves Martin Scorsese, but the problem could be finding a capable actor to be The Joker. Heath Ledger was absolutely perfect in the role and his death sealed the deal on a shocking take on the supervillain as we saw with Jared Leto in “Suicide Squad.”

Here is the origin story of The Joker:

Detective Comics #168 (February 1951) revealed that he had been a criminal known as the Red Hood. In the story, the Red Hood falls into a vat of chemicals while escaping from Batman. He emerges with white skin, green hair, and a bizarre red grin. Though many have been related, a definitive history of the Joker has never been established in the comics, and his true name has never been confirmed. Nobody knows who the Joker truly is. The most widely cited back-story can be seen in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. It depicts him as originally being an engineer at a chemical plant who quit his job to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian, only to fail miserably. Desperate to support his pregnant wife, Jeannie, the man agrees to help two criminals break into the plant where he was formerly employed. In this version of the story, the Red Hood persona is given to the inside man of every job (thus it is never the same man twice); this makes the inside man appear to be the leader, allowing the two ring-leaders to escape. During the planning, police contact him and inform him that his wife and unborn child have died in a household accident. Stricken with grief, he attempts to back out of the plan, but the criminals strong-arm him into keeping his promise. As soon as they enter the plant, however, they are immediately caught by security and a fatal shoot-out ensues, in which the two criminals are killed. As he tries to escape, he is confronted by Batman, who is investigating the disturbance. Terrified, the engineer leaps over a rail and plummets into a vat of chemicals. When he surfaces in the nearby reservoir, he removes the hood and sees his reflection: bleached chalk-white skin, ruby-red lips, and emerald green hair. These events, coupled with his other misfortunes that day, drive the engineer through the massive personality shift that results in the birth of the Joker.

[Deadline]