Warner Bros. now has two Joker stand-alone movies in the works, and Variety is reporting that one will star Jared Leto, reprising his role from Suicide Squad. Keeping track of all the potential Harley Quinn- and Joker-based movies at WB requires something like a Carrie Mathison–on-Homeland wall chart, but here’s what we know for sure: Leto will star in and executive produce his solo Joker project, which is now in search of a writer, and that movie will be different from the Joker origin story being developed by director Todd Phillips and that will potentially star Joaquin Phoenix. (That’s the same movie being produced by Martin Scorsese and that Leonardo DiCaprio was rumored for at one point.)
Warner Bros. has formed a project umbrella that runs adjacent to its primary DCEU films, meaning the studio plans to mine its DC properties for a variety of story lines with a variety of different actors that don’t have to adhere to the primary Justice League continuity. That’s where Phillips’s Joker origin story comes in. But there may be more of Leto’s version on the way in that Harley Quinn and Joker “criminal love story†that WB announced last summer, too. And now we need a nap.