Joker And Harley Quinn Will Kidnap Dr. Phil In Spin-Off Movie

Suicide Squad was a box office hit, and Margot Robbie is reprising her role with a spin-off love story between Harley Quinn and the Joker. Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have provided an update on the story, which they describe as a cross between Bad Santa and This Is Us.

"It is great," Ficarra told Metro. "The whole thing starts with Harley kidnapping Dr. Phil. Played by Dr. Phil hopefully. Because her and the Joker are having problems with their relationship. It was sort of like, we wrote Bad Santa a couple of years ago, and it was that sensibility mixed with our This Is Us sensibility. We kind of meshed them together."

That means the story will be earnest about its relationships, but between "mentally deranged people." They noted that they don't know when it will go into production, however. They suggest that DC has other movies in the queue that may come first, like the upcoming Joaquin Phoenix Joker origin story or a Birds of Prey standalone film.

The Phoenix movie has been in active production, and the studio has been showing off slight glimpses at what we can expect from it. So far we've seen a debut image that looked distinctly un-Joker-like, instead depicting Phoenix's character as a greasy sad sack. A follow-up video showed him in circus clown make-up and starting to display the character's signature grin.

Still, the Leto depiction from Suicide Squad, which would presumably be the starting point for any Joker and Harley spin-off with Robbie, doesn't quite seem to match Phoenix's upcoming movie. DC allows its film and TV universes to be more splintered than MCU's sprawling interconnected universe, so it's likely the two versions of Joker won't match up with each other.