James Gunn and Peter Safran are the new co-heads of DC Studios, but they were not involved in the production of Joker: Folie à Deux from writer-director Todd Phillips. During a recent Q&A, Phillips said Gunn and Safran were purposely left out of the discussion because Folie à Deux was considered a Warner Bros. movie, not a DC Studios movie, so it was outside of their technical purview.

"With all due respect to [Gunn and Safran], this is kind of a Warner Brothers movie, and that's them also wanting it to be like, 'Okay, Todd did his thing. Let Todd continue to do his thing,'" Phillips said, as reported by Slash Film.

Co-writer Scott Silver mentioned that Folie à Deux began production before Gunn and Safran took were hired as DC Studios co-bosses in October 2022. The first Joker movie was released in 2019.