Phillips once again directs the film, which he wrote with Scott Silver. Over the course of the previous Joker, Phillips shared looks at Phoenix, a tradition he kept up when on Dec. 10 he took to Instagram to announced filming had commenced with a photo of his leading man.

Filming is underway in New York and Los Angeles as it heads toward its Oct. 4, 2024 date from Warner Bros. Gaga previously worked with Phillips on A Star Is Born, which he produced.

The first Joker was a surprise hit, with the R-rated movie becoming one of the top-grossing DC films of all time. It followed Arthur Fleck, an aspiring stand-up and clown whose mental health issues cause him to spiral after suffering rejection after rejection. He ultimately dons the Joker persona and becomes a folk hero. The sequel title, Folie à Deux, is a reference to a medical term for an identical or similar mental disorder impacting two or more people, usually the members of a close family.

The Joker sequel arrives in the midst of a transition for DC, with newly installed DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran developing a slate of film, TV, animation and video game projects that will all take place in a shared universe. The acception will be rare projects such as Joker or Matt Reeves’ The Batman sequel that will be branded as DC Elseworlds titles, a term taken from the comics in which alternate universe stories are told.

“The bar is going to be very high for projects to be outside the DCU, the Elseworlds projects,” explained Safran last month. “But every now and then there will be something that lives up to that.”