Vera Drew, the director, writer, and star of The People's Joker, addresses the legality of the unlicensed DC film. Sporting the amusing tagline, "an illegal queer coming of age comic book movie by Vera Drew," The People's Joker is set in Gotham City and centers on Drew's Joker, an aspiring clown struggling with her gender identity. In Drew's iteration of Gotham, the Joker founds an illegal comedy troupe with another aspiring comedian after comedy has been criminalized, and their troupe attracts more rogues. The film uses popular DC Comics characters such as The Joker, Harley Quinn, and Batman to express Drew and the other stars' personal experiences and reach an audience that most superhero movies don't make a point to resonate with.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
Drew's film history includes experimental shorts and queer-centered narratives. The People's Joker marks her feature debut as a director and tells a very different comic book story. After a successful premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program, The People's Joker was pulled from TIFF "due to rights issues," which resulted in the hashtag "FreeThePeoplesJoker" trending on Twitter. Despite the experimental film's playful "illegal" tagline, the film's parody classification and opening disclaimer should protect it from being actually deemed illegal. However, the withdrawal from TIFF has audiences wondering where the film stands legally.
In an interview with Collider, Drew addresses the inherent legal issues with her rendition of the well-known character, saying that the "illegal" tag of the film wasn't literal. The director and star cites fair use and copyright laws as The People's Joker's protectors, and clarifies that the crew have done the work behind the scenes to ensure that the film's distribution is legal. See her full quote below:
I think this film can be 100% distributed. It is completely protected under fair use and copyright law. Like a parody law. The only thing that makes it weird in both of those categories is nobody's ever taken characters and IP and really personalized it in this way. So I think that's the thing that really kind of makes it seem a lot more dangerous than I actually think it is. I mean, I get it, look, I put an "illegal comic book movie" on the poster, but that was just to get your butts in the seats.
There's literally no reason for anybody to worry, I think about legal repercussions with this. Without getting into it, we've gone really far to ensure that we could do this. I probably wouldn't have spent two years of my life making an actually illegal Joker movie.
Though the film may seem like a copy of Todd Phillips' Joker, Drew has made the story and characters her own and moved into a completely distinct direction from that and other on-screen Joker stories. Her comments display that she has looked into the legal grounds for her experimental comic book film and considers her take on the Joker a parody, which sets it apart from other depictions of the character. Fair use and copyright law should protect Drew from a lawsuit while also protecting The People's Joker's distribution, though after its withdrawal from TIFF it seems that there is plenty more red tape in Drew's future as she takes the steps to properly distribute the film.
Creating an unauthorized and unlicensed movie in an industry already rife with rights and IP battles is a risky and ambitious move, especially considering the hugely popular nature of the DC characters used in Drew's film. Based on reviews from the early screening of The People's Joker, the risk paid off, and viewers found the satirical movie hilarious and shocking as well as moving. Using pop culture staples like The Joker and Batman to tell a personal, queer coming-of-age story that turns the genre on its head is an impressive move on Drew's part, and may be just what the oversaturated superhero market needs. That is, of course, if The People's Joker can make it past the legal red tape to a wider audience.