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Robert De Niro has been busy of late — The Irishman, SNL, and generally making his displeasure with Donald Trump very, very well-known. Something new on his agenda, according to The Hollywood Reporter: the DC Cinematic Universe. De Niro is in talks to join Todd Phillips’s stand-alone Joker film, starring Joaquin Phoenix. THR reports that De Niro would play “a talk show host who is somehow instrumental in the Joker’s origin.†Phillips is directing the 1980s-set movie from a script he wrote with Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter). (De Niro’s frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese was attached at one point.) This gritty “character exploration†is set to begin filming in New York this September.