Joker | Entertainment News, Photos, and Videos

Joaquin Phoenix is surprising fans!

The 44-year-old Joker actor stopped by multiple screenings of his new film at Alamo Drafthouse, as well as the 4 p.m. screening at the Universal Studios IMAX theater, on Saturday night (October 5) in Los Angeles.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Joaquin Phoenix

Joaquin kept it super lowkey in a grey hoodie as he entered the screenings, and then took time to meet with fans at each theater, answer questions and even snap a few selfies with lucky fans.

In case you didn’t see, the movie just broke the record for the biggest October opening ever!

READ MORE: Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker Halloween Costume & Makeup Guide

Joker is big – record-breaking, in fact!

The movie pulled in an impressive $93.5 million in its opening weekend at the box office, according to Variety on Sunday (October 5).

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Joaquin Phoenix

This marks the biggest October opening weekend of all time, beating Venom‘s $80 million opening. The Joaquin Phoenix-led film also earned more than the rest of the Top 10 movies at the box office combined!

Last week’s top earner, Abominable, came in second with $12 million for an overall haul of $37.8 million thus far.

Downton Abbey brought in $8 million to bring its total to $73 million, while Hustlers brought in an additional $6.3 million, bringing its haul to $91.3 million domestically to date.

READ MORE: Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker Halloween Costume & Makeup Guide

Joker is not only one of the most buzzed-about movies of 2019 – it’s also the perfect inspiration for your 2019 Halloween costume!

Joaquin Phoenix‘s 2019 portrayal of Arthur Fleck, otherwise known as the Joker, has a very distinct style that can be recreated at home just in time for the holiday.

Not sure where to start with planning this year’s look? We’ve put together a guide to getting the signature Joker style in just a few steps, from the costume down to the makeup.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Joaquin Phoenix

Wondering what everyone will be wearing this year? Check out the most popular Halloween costume searches of 2019 so far….

Scroll through the slideshow to see how to dress like the Joker for Halloween this year…More Here! »

Josh Brolin has taken to social media to share his thoughts on the new movie Joker and how one can truly appreciate the film.

The 51-year-old Oscar-nominated actor previously worked with the film’s star Joaquin Phoenix in the 2014 movie Inherent Vice.

“To appreciate Joker I believe you have to have either gone through something traumatic in your lifetime (and I believe most of us have) or understand somewhere in your psyche what true compassion is (which usually comes from having gone through something traumatic, unfortunately). An example of dangerous compassion would be to, say, make a film made about the fragility of the human psyche, and make it so raw, so brutal, so balletic that by the time you leave the theatre you not only don’t want to hurt anything but you desperately want an answer and a solution to the violence and mental health issues that have spun out of control around us. This film makes you hurt and only in pain do we ever want to change,” Josh wrote on Instagram. “It’s all in the irony of trauma — a fine line between the resentment of wanting to hurt society back for raping you of a decent life, for not protecting you, and accepting what feels like alien feelings with softening to those others who seem freakish in our era of judgment, and digital damnation.”

“Like kids in Middle School: man, they can just be mean. For no reason. And, sometimes, those awful little clicky kids breed an evil in someone that rages much later, when everyone pretends we are all back to normal, when we all thought it had just manned up and gone away,” he added.

Josh concluded, “We have a habit of hating and ostracizing and dividing and sweeping our problems under the rug. Joker, is simply lifting the rug and looking underneath it. Nothing more. Nothing less. It’s there.”

Joker has only been in theaters for one day so far and it’s already breaking records at the box office!

The new movie, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character, earned $39.9 million on opening day – the biggest single day at the box office ever for the month of October. This amount includes the $13.3 million that the movie earned during the Thursday night previews, according to THR.

The previous biggest day for October was Venom‘s first Friday last year with $32.5 million.

Joker is expected to pull in around $95 million for its opening weekend, which will also be a record for the month of October.

Stay tuned for more box office numbers this weekend!

The new movie Joker is now in theaters and it’s going to be a massive hit at the box office this weekend.

Fans often stay to watch the credits during comic book movies as studios often include extra scenes or footage during the credits or after the credits.

So, should audiences stick around for the credits at Joker? We can confirm that there is NOT an end credits scene for this movie.

Joker centers around the iconic arch nemesis and is an original, standalone fictional story not seen before on the big screen. Director Todd Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night…but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.

Joaquin Phoenix is on the cover of Vanity Fair‘s November 2019 issue, out now.

On the reaction to Joker and his character: “It’s a difficult film. In some ways, it’s good that people are having a strong reaction to it…there’s so many different ways of looking at it. You can either say here’s somebody who, like everybody, needed to be heard and understood and to have a voice. Or you can say this is somebody that disproportionately needs a large quantity of people to be fixated on him. His satisfaction comes as he stands in amongst the madness.”

On taking the role: “I was going through [the script] and I realized, I said, ‘Well, why would we make something, like, where you sympathize or empathize with this villain?’ It’s like, because that’s what we have to do. It’s so easy for us to—we want the simple answers, we want to vilify people. It allows us to feel good if we can identify that as evil. ‘Well, I’m not racist ’cause I don’t have a Confederate flag or go with this protest.’ It allows us to feel that way, but that’s not healthy because we’re not really examining our inherent racism that most white people have, certainly. Or whatever it may be. Whatever issues you may have. It’s too easy for us and I felt like, yeah, we should explore this villain. This malevolent person.”

On fiancee Rooney Mara: “She’s the only girl I ever looked up on the internet. We were just friends, email friends. I’d never done that. Never looked up a girl online.”

On not wanting to discuss the death of his brother, River Phoenix, during the promotion of Walk the Line: “Because I came out publicly as an actor at that time, I suddenly was confronted with having to talk about something that already was very public, in the public sphere, where you’re in a five-minute interview, every five minutes and everything, at a f–king junket. It felt like, ‘Well, I’m not sure this is the right place and it feels insincere to be talking about this and I can hear in your voice that you’re trying to sound like somebody who really cares and is interested, but let’s be f–king frank about what’s happening here.’ It was just much easier to go, ‘F–k you,’ which is an easier thing for me for whatever reason, than to explain it.”

For more from Joaquin, head to VanityFair.com.