VENICE, Italy (AP) — The Venice Film Festival is getting ready to welcome Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix for the world premiere of “Joker: Folie à Deux” Wednesday evening.
Todd Phillips’ film is one of the most highly anticipated of the festival, playing in the official competition five years after “Joker” won the Golden Lion. Warner Bros. is giving the dark comic book film the glitzy festival treatment before it’s released in theaters in October.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” finds’ Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham and awaiting trial for his crimes. There he meets Gaga’s Harley Quinn.
“We knew we had to swing for the fences; we wanted to create something as crazy and fearless as Joker himself,” Phillips wrote in his directors’ statement. “So, Scott Silver and I wrote a script that delved further into the idea of identity. Who is Arthur Fleck? And where does the music inside him come from?”
The…