Prior to his involvement in Joker, actor Joaquin Phoenix wanted to act in a low-budget character study in which he played a famous villain. He had been offered a number of roles in the Marvel cinematic universe, including Doctor Strange and Hulk, but balked at a multi-film commitment. When Todd Phillips, director and co-writer of Joker, heard of Phoenix's interest, he began the process of creating Joker in hopes of working with Phoenix.
In writing the script for Joker with co-writer Joel Silver, director Todd Phillips wanted to create a more realistic and compelling origin story for one of the most popular villains in comic book history. To do that, Phillips and Silver threw away Joker's usual origin story and started with a relatively clean slate.
A fan of Martin Scorsese movies, Phillips drew major influence from Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982) when writing the film's script and directing it. He even cast Robert DeNiro, the star of both of those Scorsese films, in Joker. Phillips thinks of the movie as "just another interpretation [of the Joker character], like people do interpretations of Macbeth." He was also inspired by the original comic books, as well as historical crime events in New York during the 1980s.
Prior to co-writing and directing Joker, Phillips mainly directed broad "bro" comedy films, but controversially said that he could no longer work in comedy due to the prevalence of "woke culture" within the genre, which prevented him from being irreverent and politically incorrect in the ways that he wanted to. On the release of Joker, Phillips received some criticism about its seeming endorsement of white male violence and hate, with many worried that it would spur a wave of gun violence. In an interview with NPR, Phillips said, "To us, it was surprising the reaction, because isn't it the same thing to pretend that these types of people don't exist? Pretend that we're not failing these people. Why is it so bad to shine a light on them and see what makes them that way or try and look into it? That's what it felt like we were doing. It didn't feel like by making a movie about something, you're celebrating it. Representation is not endorsement. It always felt very off to us."
