By Creative Media Times

The final trailer for Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker has just arrived, ahead of the highly-anticipated film’s premiere at the 76th Venice International Film Festival later this weekend.

The trailer is dark and bleak, showing the character’s slow descent into madness. Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) lives a lonely life and tends to his ailing mother. He just wants to make people laugh as a stand-up comedian, but he can’t seem to catch a break. “Can you please stop bothering my kid?,” says the mother of a child he was trying to entertain.

We also see late night variety show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) mocking him. But he may have something in store for everyone. When Fleck appears on his show he said: “Can you introduce me as Joker?”, widely smiling and wearing a clown makeup as he heads onstage.

Joker is one of the most iconic in comicbook history, has been played by numerous celebrated actors on the big screen, from Jack Nicholson in Batman (1989), Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008), and most recently Jared Leto in the supervillain ensemble Suicide Squad (2016).

Director Todd Phillips is best known for writing and directing The Hangover Trilogy and Borat, for which he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Also in the film are Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Marc Maron, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Shea Whigham, Brett Cullen, Douglas Hodge and Josh Pais.

Joker is set to invade theaters on October 4, 2019.