Where to watch Joker (2019)
Joker is available to stream in GB on HBO Max. It can also be rented or bought from Amazon and AppleTV.
In 1980s Gotham City, a struggling comedian faces isolation, hardship, and growing hostility from the world around him. As his efforts to connect and find purpose repeatedly fail, he begins a disturbing transformation that draws him toward crime, violence, and a darker public identity.
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Josh Pais, Rocco Luna, Marc Maron
Stream | GB
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Trivia & production notes
- Joaquin Phoenix spent years asking his agent to find him a low-budget character study about a comic book villain before Todd Phillips pitched Joker in 2016.
- Phoenix initially rejected the Joker concept for his character study idea, believing the character had already been thoroughly explored.
- Todd Phillips declined multiple offers to direct comic book films before Joker because he found them loud and uninteresting.
- Phillips conceived Joker as a response to difficulty making comedy films in what he called woke culture, deciding instead to turn the comic book movie formula on its head.
- Warner Bros. pushed Phillips to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as the Joker, hoping to leverage Martin Scorsese's involvement to attract him.
- Phillips and Scott Silver deliberately wrote the Joker script with Joaquin Phoenix in mind, approaching it as introducing comic book movies into Phoenix's world rather than the reverse.
- The script took a year to write and required extensive approval negotiations with Warner Bros., which raised concerns about the film's content and worried about merchandise like Joker pajamas sold at Target.
- Phillips drew inspiration from Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy, along with 1970s character studies like Serpico and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
- The subway shooting scene was inspired by the 1984 New York City Subway shooting, with Arthur Fleck partially based on the incident's perpetrator Bernhard Goetz.
- Phillips and Silver rejected the traditional origin story of the Joker being disfigured by acid as too unrealistic, instead crafting an original narrative.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article Joker (2019 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.
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