The People’s Joker Gets a Theatrical Release
The strangest version of the Joker yet will be making its way to theaters. At last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a film called The People’s Joker, about a trans version of the legendary Batman villain, canceled its planned screenings due to a “rights issue” with Warner Bros. Discovery, the studio that owns the rights to all of the DC Comics characters, including Batman and the Joker. Well, the issue must have been ironed out because Variety reports that The People’s Joker has been acquired by distributor Altered Innocence and will be released in theaters on April 5, 2024. A disclaimer featured at the beginning of the movie states, “This film is a parody and is at present time completely unauthorized by DC Comics, Warner Brothers or anyone claiming ownership of the trademarks therein (eg. ‘Joker,’ ‘Batman, etc.).”
Thank God we’ll be able to see the trans Joker movie in a theater; society was on the precipice until this scored a release date. (Why so) Seriously, though, I’m not bothered that The People’s Joker is being released; I don’t want to see it, but there are a lot of movies I don’t want to see in theaters. The issue seemed to be that Batman and the Joker were the names of characters in the film, as opposed to altered names to avoid violating copyright laws. But in the Variety article, the Joker character is referred to as “Joker the Harlequin;” I wonder if this was done after Warner Bros. challenged them, and it was enough to satisfy WB. This is a problem that could have easily been avoided, but as I said a year ago, I think the controversy was by design to frame The People’s Joker as “the movie they don’t want you to see.” I guess we’ll know if it helped come spring.
