We already know that Todd Phillip’s Joker is trying to distance itself from the DCEU – pitched as a darker, grittier, more serious stand-alone spin-off. This is a crime thriller that just happens to be set in a world that might one day have superheroes in it, and it is most definitely not a Batman movie.
Making that even clearer, Phillips has cast Bruce Wayne as a little boy – with Dante Pereira-Olson as a young Bruce in a world that clearly has a very different continuity to the comic books.
Pereira-Olson starred as a young version of Joaquin Phoenix’s character in You Were Never Really Here, so it’s likely that his future on-screen nemesis recommended him for the part.
He’s also got a new butler too, with Douglas Hodge (Robin Hood, Serena) cast as Alfred. Since Alfred already has a new backstory mapped out in Pennyworth, and grown-up Bruce obviously has his own upcoming film, it seems unlikely that Joker will spend too much time gearing either character up for anything that may or may not lay in their potential futures. Are they both just there to remind us that this is (sort of) a Batman story? Or will little Bruce play a bigger part in the Joker’s origin story, teasing a future franchise that we’ll probably never get to see?
Pereira-Olson and Hodge join Phoenix in a cast that includes Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Zazie Beetz and Brett Cullen as Bruce’s dad, Thomas Wayne. Joker is set for release on October 4th, 2019.