Joker/Harley Quinn Spinoff Writers Say the Film Will Be a Cross Between ‘Bad Santa’ and ‘This Is Us’

All the Joker-related news has had to do with Joaquin Phoenix this week, but he isn’t the only one donning clown makeup right now. There’s also Jared Leto, whose turn as the Clown Prince of Gotham in “Suicide Squad” wasn’t especially well received but is receiving a standalone project co-starring Margot Robbie‘s Harley Quinn nevertheless. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who are writing said spinoff, reveal in a new Metro interview that the film lies somewhere in between “Bad Santa” and “This Is Us.”

“It is great. The whole thing starts with Harley kidnapping Dr. Phil. Played by Dr. Phil hopefully. Because her and the Joker are having problems with their relationship,” Ficarra says. “We had so much fun, I don’t know if we have had more fun writing a script in our career.”

“It was sort of like, we wrote ‘Bad Santa’ a couple of years ago, and it was that sensibility mixed with our ‘This Is Us’ sensibility. We kind of meshed them together,” he Ficarra. “We were doing a relationship movie but with the sensibility of a ‘Bad Santa,’ f—ed up, mentally deranged people. It was a lot of fun.”

As for when it might be released, the two know about as much as we do: “I don’t know where it is on the queue of DC movies,” says Requa.