\n<\/p>\n
Vera Drew never received a cease-and-desist letter. She would like to be very clear on that point.<\/p>\n
Drew headed to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, newly acquired passport in hand, just a half-hour after finishing the final (or so she thought) cut of \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker<\/a>.\u201d The chaotic, crowdsourced movie reframed Batman\u2019s best-known nemesis as a trans coming-of-age tale, and represented <\/strong>a natural evolution for Drew, a Los Angeles-based television editor and writer for alt-comedy fixtures like Megan Amram, Tim & Eric and Sacha Baron Cohen.<\/p>\n \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker,\u201d which Drew starred in as well as directed and co-wrote, was one of 10 titles slated for the eminent festival\u2019s Midnight Madness section alongside the likes of \u201cThe Blackening\u201d and \u201cWeird: The Al Yankovic Story.\u201d Each film receives a splashy midnight premiere along with a handful of daytime screenings, most of them for press and potential distributors.<\/p>\n Unless, that is, a filmmaker receives a letter from Warner Bros. Discovery the day before. A letter that is not<\/em> a cease-and-desist but that does<\/em> convey the disapproval of a multimedia conglomerate with the rights to the film\u2019s characters \u2014 and a huge legal team.<\/p>\n \u201cThis letter was actually kind of complimentary, but it expressed their concern that the film infringed on their brand,\u201d Drew said. \u201cI was devastated. I was like, \u2018No, I got a passport for this! We hired lawyers!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A handful of lawyers had, in fact, advised Drew pro bono as she wrote the script with Bri LeRose. But after Peter Kuplowsky, the Midnight Madness programmer, fell in love with the film (\u201cIt was punk and exciting and transgressive and sort of inspiring\u201d) and lobbied hard to include it in the festival, he did set one condition. \u201cWe wanted her to have a legal team vet her project,\u201d he said, at which point Drew retained the law firm Donaldson Callif Perez.<\/p>\n A series of negotiations \u2014 almost literally 11th-hour negotiations, in light of the scheduled start time \u2014 between the festival staff and Warner Bros. Canada resulted in a compromise: The show could go on. Once. At midnight. After that, the first \u201cPeople\u2019s Joker\u201d TIFF screening would also be the last one. (A Warner Bros. Discovery spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On one level, the scuttled screenings were a blessing to Drew. \u201cHonestly, the press screenings were freaking me out a bit,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had a whole festival run planned after that, but I came back and really needed to hit pause and strategize.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus began several months of silence until the film tentatively started poking its head up for a handful of \u201csecret screenings,\u201d then film festivals, buoyed by a #FreeThePeoplesJoker campaign on social media. This skittish limbo will finally come to an end on April 5, a full year and a half after the film\u2019s Toronto unveiling, when the queer-centric distributor Altered Innocence will release \u201cThe People\u2019s Joker.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Frank Jaffe, the owner of Altered Innocence, said he received his own copy of the same not-a-cease-and-desist letter shortly after announcing his company had acquired the film. \u201cI just think they wanted more information,\u201d he said. \u201cThey wanted to know the scope of the release.\u201d<\/p>\n That scope is currently at 76 theaters and counting. \u201cThere are a lot of queer people in a lot of small communities,\u201d Jaffe said, \u201cand we want to reach as many of them as we can.\u201d He said the company\u2019s small size \u2014 he is its sole full-time employee \u2014 makes it fairly nimble in terms of scaling up. Or, if Warner Bros. Discovery decides to get involved, scaling way down.<\/p>\n As it stands now, though, audiences outside the film-festival circuit are about to get their first look at a brash, kaleidoscopic riff on the Batman legend that incorporates images and plot lines from seemingly every version of Bruce Wayne and Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. Batman and the Joker.<\/p>\n