Prepare to be spooked! The first footage of Joaquin Phoenix in full makeup as The Joker is here.
Director Todd Phillips shared a video on Instagram on Friday, September 21, of the Oscar nominee, 43, dressed as his character Arthur Fleck.
In the clip, Phoenix stands with his hands in the pockets of his jacket as a flickering image of a clown begins to play over his face. As he begins to smirk, the teaser cuts to him with terrifying white, blue and red face makeup and long, green hair.
The eerie first look at the upcoming origin movie is set to The Guess Who’s 1969 song “Laughing.”
Phillips, 47, previously shared a photo on Instagram of Phoenix in costume sans makeup. The actor has been filming the movie in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in recent days.
The cast of the as-yet-untitled film, which is expected to hit theaters on October 4, 2019, also includes Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Marc Maron and Zazie Beetz. The plot focuses on how The Joker became a criminal mastermind and the notorious enemy of Batman.
“I wouldn’t quite classify this as like any genre. I wouldn’t say it’s a superhero movie, or a studio movie,” Phoenix told Collider in July. “Underneath the excitement of these films, and the size of them, there are these incredible characters that are dealing with real-life struggles. And sometimes that is uncovered and exposed, and sometimes it isn’t, and so I always felt like there were characters in comics that were really interesting and deserve the opportunity to be kind of studied. And so I think that’s what Todd sees appealing about this idea.”
