DC Comics’ greatest villain has descended upon the Venice Film Festival. Director Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga swept onto the Lido arm-in-arm Wednesday to discuss the creation of Warner Bros’ wildly anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. The director and his stars are in Italy in hopes of recreating the first Joker film’s critical and commercial magic, which effectively began when it won Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion in 2019 — an exceedingly rare honor for a Hollywood superhero movie. The film went on to earn over $1 billion at the worldwide box office and earned Phoenix a best-actor Oscar.

Phillips told a packed press conference in Italy that “it feels correct” to be back in Venice debuting his sequel, but he conceded that making the follow-up and bringing it to the world’s oldest film festival made him “more nervous.”

“It’s a lot easier to come into something as an insurgent than it is as the incumbent,” he said. “There’s definitely a sense of more nervousness with this second one.”

Phillips said he and his star, Phoenix, regularly joked on set during the making of the first Joker that their efforts would spawn a series of sequels in the usual Hollywood superhero vein. But they eventually did decide to come back together for a follow-up, but only on the shared belief that it “had to feel audacious and like we were really swinging for the fences,” according to Philips. The director said they asked themselves, “Could we make something unexpected like the first one even though it’s a sequel?”

Phoenix returns to the role of Arthur Fleck for Joker 2, while Lady Gaga joins the franchise in a part inspired by the comic book character Harley Quinn. The duo are known for their toxic romantic relationship in the comics, with the title Folie à Deux referencing the medical term for an identical or similar mental disorder impacting two or more people, usually members of the same family. The film’s supporting cast includes Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and Zazie Beetz.

Phillips and Phoenix said their ideas for the sequel hinged on the notion of leaning more heavily into the musical world that occupies the cracked mind of Arthur Fleck. Early in the press conference Philipps said the premise was inspired by a dream Phoenix had — but the famously mercurial actor initially declined to discuss it before the media. Later he relented, to an extent, saying, “I had this dream that I was performing as Joker doing songs, and I just called Todd because I thought there might be something there — and there wasn’t,” he claimed, with Phillips shaking his head and laughing beside him.

Lady Gaga, whom Philipps and Phoenix referred to as her non-stage name Stephanie thoughout the press conference, said working with Phoenix was “a breeze.”

“I actually really enjoyed it and it was a completely different experience than I’ve ever had with another actor,” Gaga said of her co-star. “He’s incredibly loose and free.”

Warner Bros’ official synopsis of the film reads: Joker: Folie à Deux finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as the Joker. While grappling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love but also discovers the music that has always been within him.

The film received its first press screenings Wednesday morning in Venice. Filmgoers on the ground have been buzzing about Phoenix’s powerful and disturbing return as the lead character — as well as his strikingly emaciated appearance — and the movie’s sweeping musical sequences, led by a captivating Gaga.

“In 2018, when we first made Joker, we could never have imagined it would strike such a chord with audiences around the world,” Phillips writes in his official Venice film fest director’s statement for Joker 2. “Joaquin and I had discussed a sequel, but never seriously — until we witnessed the reaction to Arthur’s story. If we were going to do it, we knew we had to swing for the fences; we wanted to create something as crazy and fearless as Joker himself. So, Scott Silver and I wrote a script that delved further into the idea of identity. Who is Arthur Fleck? And where does the music inside him come from?”

For moviegoers struggling to keep up with Hollywood’s steady output of superhero sagas, the Joker sequel is part of the DC Elseworlds brand, which allows for stories set outside of the shared DC Universe being crafted by DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran. Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II movie and the HBO Max Penguin series also fall under that banner.

Joker 2 releases in North America on Oct. 4.