‘Joker: Laugh Riot’: Batman’s Greatest Villain to Get His Own Anime Series!!

Batman fans have had a lot to be excited about at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival this year. The week opened with DC Studios showcasing the first footage of the Dynamic Duo movie to attendees in France, showcasing a bold visual style utilizing puppets to explore two of the most notable Robins, Jason Todd and Dick Grayson. Two other projects, the gritty Batman: Knightfall and Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2, also received official trailers, teasing the return of the World’s Greatest Detective later this year in two very different ways. Better yet, the latter finally teased the much-anticipated arrival of the Joker into the Batman: The Animated Series spiritual successor to push Bruce Wayne to his breaking point. However, that’s not all the Clown Prince of Crime is scheming.

During a DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation joint presentation with Peter Safran and Sam Register at Annecy on Thursday, the Joker once again showed that wherever Batman goes, he’s not far behind to cause chaos of his own. Three new DC series were officially announced as greenlit, including a series adaptation of the popular Absolute Batman comics and a new show centered on everyone’s favorite superdog, Krypto. The third, meanwhile, was Joker: Laugh Riot, an original adult animated project centered on the infamous villain that, in a twist, will mark DC‘s first-ever anime series. Warner Bros. Animation, DC Studios, and SOLA Entertainment are collaborating to give the Joker his spotlight, but the surprises don’t stop there.

In another twist on the typical Batman formula, Laugh Riot will be a different kind of exploration of the Joker and his relationship with the Caped Crusader. It takes place after Bats is murdered, but instead of celebrating, the clown plays detective, beginning a violent crusade throughout Gotham to learn who stole his longtime nemesis from him. In his search for answers about who finally felled Bruce, he slowly becomes more like the vigilante he fought against, and he starts to face the terrifying reality that he has no idea who he is without Batman. It plays to a thread that previous Dark Knight-centric projects have loosely pulled, showing that, without Batman, crime truly has no punchline.

Who Is at the Helm of ‘Joker: Laugh Riot’?

DC isn’t a complete stranger to the world of anime, with Warner Bros. Animation licensing 2024’s Suicide Squad Isekai. SOLA Entertainment is a fitting partner for the studio in making their first proper anime, though. The banner previously provided 2D animation for The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim and worked on the Rick & Morty anime OVAs and Blade Runner: Black Lotus, among other things. Yasuhuro Aoki, a veteran from the War of the Rohirrim animation department and the director of the 2025 rom-com fantasy anime film ChaO, is helming Laugh Riot and is joined by executive producer Jim Krieg.