In a year that brought quite a bit of surprising comic book movie news, the announcement that Warner Bros. was working on an origin film about The Joker had to be the most exciting revelation of all. The plan is to set the movie in the 1980s and cast different actors from those in the DC Extended Universe movies. Obviously, although it would be great if the rumors about the involvement of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio turned out to be true, initial fan reaction was less than positive.

This might have had something to do with an apparent lack of a direction on the part of Warner Bros. But that doesn't really matter, since the project is reportedly moving forward. And it’s moving forward much faster than we originally expected.

Justin Kroll of Variety recently reported that the Joker script will be delivered within days, which is extremely fast when you consider that nobody knew anything about the project a month ago. Kroll added that the film is expected to begin shooting sometime in 2018:

Hear THE JOKER script will be turned in by next week, super fast considering when announcement went out. Bodes well for 2018 shoot.

"” Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) September 20, 2017

Of course, Kroll didn’t mention his sources. But if the report is accurate, and the script really is that close to completion, we have to wonder how long this Joker project has been in development. We hope that Warner Bros. really did manage to keep it a secret for some time. Otherwise, the script would have been written in just a couple of weeks!

And we know how that turned out for Suicide Squad"¦