Joaquin Phoenix is about to haunt your dreams.
The 44-year-old actor brings the DC supervillain to life in the first trailer for the Todd Phillips-directed origin story.
Philipps shared the trailer first with fans at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Tuesday just hours after he tweeted out the first poster for the film. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. made the preview available online.
While plot details of the film have been kept under wraps, Phoenix previously opened up about taking on the character in a July interview with the website Collider.
“It feels unique, it’s its own world in some ways, and maybe, mostly, it scares the f— s— out of me, or something,” Phoenix said, before adding that any actor’s next project “might as well be the thing that scares you the most.”
The actor also discussed what it’s like to step into a role that so many people have opinions about.
“It’s a magnified version of what you deal with as an actor,” he said, explaining that whenever an actor takes on a famous role and then gets in front of the film’s creative team, it can be nerve-wracking.
“They have their expectation, and they’ve imagined things in their head, and they’ve imagined different actors, and suddenly you take it on and so there’s this moment of anxiety of, ‘Did I live up to their expectations?’” he continued. “And at some point, you have to just own it and say like ‘I can’t consider who they might have thought up before or what the movie was for the six months ago, this is what it is now and I have to find my way into it.’”
RELATED: Joaquin Phoenix Sprints Through the Streets of New York City as He Films Joker
The famous character has previously been portrayed by many actors, including Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and Jared Leto.
Warner Bros has described the film as being an “exploration of a man disregarded by society [that] is not only a gritty character study but also a broader cautionary tale,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Joker laughs into theaters Oct. 4.
