New Joker Anime Can Erase the Memory of Folie à Deux’s Faux Pas

By Anthony Lund Jun 26th, 2026, 1:00 pm

A man with clown make-up sits in front of a woman in a res jacket.

DC Studios just announced Joker: Laugh Riot, a new series that will also be the first major outing for Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime since the disastrous Joker: Folie à Deux in 2024.

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Speaking at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Thursday, DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation revealed a wave of animated projects, including the new Joker series, along with other titles such as Absolute Batman. Billed as the studio’s first-ever anime series, Joker: Laugh Riot certainly has a lot to make up for after Todd Phillips’ sequel to his Oscar-winning 2019 hit crashed and burned, bringing the Joker to a new low in his on-screen outings. This fresh medium could be exactly what is needed to exorcise the demons of Folie à Deux and give Batman’s iconic villain a shot at redemption.

The setup of Joker: Laugh Riot is not a common one, as it completely flips the expected Batman dynamic on its head. The logline for the series finds Batman dead, murdered by an unknown assailant, an event that sets Joker on a crusade to hunt down the person responsible for robbing him of his ultimate adversary. The story is a character study of what becomes of one of DC Comics’ greatest villains when he realises he has lost his purpose, similar in some ways to 2019’s exceptional Joker.

Text in a chaotic style on a black background. — (Warner Bros. Animation)

Joker: Laugh Riot comes with a high calibre of acclaimed names in its creative team. The series will be directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, whose feature ChaO was among last year’s best-reviewed animated films and who worked on The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Warner Bros. Animation is producing alongside Sola Entertainment, with Jim Krieg serving as producer. It’s also worth noting that Aoki is no stranger to Gotham, having directed a segment of the 2008 anthology Batman: Gotham Knight. The announcement did not include any details on casting or a release date.

Joker Can Get Redemption for His 2024 Misfire

Joker: Folie à Deux was hard to ignore when it arrived in cinemas amid sky-high expectations. Todd Phillips’ 2024 musical sequel, which brought back Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck and paired him with Lady Gaga’s take on Harley Quinn, pulled off a huge triple flop by scoring worse than the 2019 original in every way possible. It earned a 33% score on Rotten Tomatoes, roughly half that of its predecessor, took less than $40 million on its opening weekend, and landed a “D” CinemaScore from audiences — the worst score ever for a comic book movie.

Movies flop all the time, and the last five years have seen many big-budget blockbusters struggle to get a return on their costs. Joker: Folie à Deux‘s reported $200 million budget made it one of the biggest flops in recent Warner Bros. history.

Joker: Laugh Riot will avoid many of Folie à Deux‘s issues even before it debuts. Developing the project as a series removes the pressure of box-office expectations for a start. Switching from live-action to animation is also a way of reducing production costs and avoiding the controversy over casting that always seems to follow recasts of iconic live-action roles. Although it has just been announced, Laugh Riot already seems like it can live up to its title and give the Joker a story worthy of his legendary status.