The People’s Joker is Getting a U.S. Screening Next Week

You may recall that late last year, a movie by the name of The People’s Joker caught the attention of film folks during the festival circuit. After a single showing at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Warner Bros. Discovery shut down future screenings on the basis that they own the rights to the actual DC Comics villain Joker (and more specifically, the 2019 film that this movie is parodying). Following that, director/actor Vera Drew said the film would eventually come out, it just wouldn’t appear at any future screenings that year.

The time for its release is apparently now, as The People’s Joker is set to premiere on Saturday, July 15 at Los Angeles’ Outfast film festival. Drew broke the news earlier in the week on Twitter, saying she was “beyond grateful” to finally bring the movie stateside. Following the screening, Drew and her cowriter, along with cast and crew members, will have a Q&A about the film. For those in the LA area, it looks like general admission tickets aren’t that costly, but it wouldn’t hurt to grab them now if you’re interested.

Before it was pulled from the film festival scene, the big draw for People’s Joker was that Drew hyped it up as a new take on Batman that was also “some sort of big creative project around gender, comedy, and mom issues.” She plays the titular Joker (aka Harlequin), reimagined as a stand-up comic with dreams of being a big player in Gotham’s crime world. According to a description from LA’s Beyond Fest last year, the movie also features “multiple filmmaking techniques from animation to CGI to create a truly subversive comic-book epic.” Impressions after the movie’s single TIFF screening were fairly positive, and having the black mark of being disapproved by Warner Bros. has likely helped its reputation grow in the last year. (Especially right now, given some of its recent releases.) Maybe in the time since then, Drew’s also managed to secure a distributor or work out some kind of deal with WB so more people can see it.

Again, The People’s Joker will premiere on Saturday, July 15 at Outfest in Los Angeles. Tickets for the festival can be purchased right here.

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