THE BATMAN Director Explains Why There Were Never Plans For A JOKER Crossover Despite Tonal Similarities

The Batman and Joker could quite easily take place in the same world, as the two movies undeniably share a lot in common. Despite the Clown Prince of Crime's origin story featuring an R-Rating, they're tonally very similar, and the fact that Thomas Wayne is running for mayor in both means it probably wouldn't be that hard to make it so that they're both set in the Batverse.

Talking to Games Radar, The Batman director Matt Reeves made it clear there are no plans for Robert Pattinson's Dark Knight and Joaquin Phoenix's Harlequin of Hate to cross paths. 

"I was finishing the Planet of the Apes movies when I first came on board, which is 2017. It's been five years in the making. When I was working on the script and got deep into the script, Joker hadn't come out yet," the filmmaker explained. "I didn't know what Joker was or what it was going to be, and then I became aware of it once we were very deep into the film, and the fact that they were grounding things in a way that was reminiscent of things that we were doing - that wasn't planned. There was never really any discussion of crossover."

"But it was interesting to see that we were trying to ground our stories and that audiences were excited about the fact that you could take Gotham and make it feel so much like our world," Reeves continued. "That was something from the beginning that I had wanted to do."

Ultimately, any similarities between The Batman and Joker appear to be coincidental, but with a few years between their respective theatrical releases, we can't imagine any casual moviegoers getting confused! As for the Clown Prince of Crime, only time will tell whether Reeves has plans to put his own spin on the character (and how much that will differ from Phoenix's take on the iconic villain).

As for the Joker franchise, there continue to be rumblings about a sequel being in the works.

The Batman is now playing in theaters.