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It was a classic superhero vs. supervillain showdown: an indie filmmaker practically daring DC Comics and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, to sue her for making a feature-length satire featuring versions of Batman, the Joker and other DC characters.
Now, after years of delays, Vera Drew’s parody The People’s Joker is being released by the Los Angeles-based distribution company Altered Innocence—and has booked a weeklong engagement at the Hollywood Theatre, starting April 19.
“This movie started as a DIY community project for queer artists, and I made it with my friends to process what it was like coming out as a trans woman working in the film and TV industry,” Drew said in a statement. “It has been a long road freeing The People’s Joker and finding a release plan that rings true to the queer, anarchist spirit we had while making it.”
The People’s Joker stars Drew as Joker the Harlequin/Vera, a trans woman from Smallville (Superman’s hometown) who joins a Gotham City’s sketch comedy program. Though she was inspired by Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019), Drew brings her own flair to the tale, even including a scene where Joker embraces her transition by diving into a vat of estrogen.
Rather than stealthily work around the specifics of the DC universe, Drew embraced them. The film features a fascist Batman (believable), a comedic take on Ra’s al Ghul (also believable), and an additional Joker, played by Kane Distler, who is clearly inspired by Jared Leto’s, ahem, divisive take on the character in Suicide Squad (2016).
After The People’s Joker was pulled from the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, it was speculated that Warner Bros. was trying to bury the project. But it was always unlikely that the film would vanish forever, since copyright law’s fair use doctrine protects parody.
As the trailer states, the movie is “absolutely not from DC Comics, Warner Bros. Discovery, Animal Planet or whatever.”
Get tickets at hollywoodtheatre.org.