‘Joker 2’ Trailer Avoids the Music, but ‘First Omen’ Affirms the Perils of IP and More

Even with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, 'Joker: Folie à Deux' could be a sequel to a surprise smash that "disappoints" by merely grossing what was expected the first time

In tonight’s newsletter, Scott Mendelson discusses…

• That new Joker: Folie à Deux trailer, what it doesn’t show and how the sequel might play sans the presumption of danger and as not the only big fish in the post-summer/pre-Thanksgiving season.

• Lionsgate moved Saw XI to September 2025 because now that they have the franchise's goodwill back, they can’t afford to rush the follow-up.

• It’s hard out there for a Coppola… when he tryin' to get this money for the wine.

• What the soft opening of The First Omen says about the value of IP in horror.

Fresh off its debut at CinemaCon, the first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux has dropped online. The weirdest thing about the announcement teaser is that it does somewhat hide the fact that Joquen Phoenix (as Arthur Fleck/the Joker) and Lady Gaga (presumably as Harley Quinn) will sing and dance to (mostly existing) songs amid the R-rated bad romance. There’s plenty of chatter about music, sequences of Gaga and Phoenix partaking in what seem to be fantasy musical numbers, while the second half of the trailer is set to a duet of “What the World Needs Now,” but no actual onscreen singing.

You’d think when you’ve got Gaga (a circumstantial butts-in-seats star) as a marquee character (Harley may be an added value element, but that’s her purpose this time out), you don’t hide the jukebox musical elements. However, there has long been a disconnect between focus groups who swear they don’t like musicals and unaware audiences who walk into Wonka and enjoy it anyway. So even after Wonka, The Color Purple and Mean Girls have been (at least in North America) big hits, and even after the likes of La La Land, The Greatest Showman, Mamma Mia, and Les Miserables showed the commercial value of a live-action musical, Hollywood has been hiding the tunes at least since Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd in late 2007.