Joker: 10 1970s Comic Book Movies DC Should Make Next

Joker could very well be on its way to becoming the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time. Adjust for inflation, however, and there's still one 1970s classic that stands head and shoulders above the rest as the biggest R-rated hit.

The Exorcist really set the standard in what you could get away with in mainstream horror and still bring in big audiences and, if DC do want to go down the "dark, R-rated seventies blockbuster" route, then there are definitely worse models to follow.

Characters popular in DC's Vertigo imprint would also seem to be the perfect candidates for roles in adaptations that are more tightly-focused character study than spectacular action epic, with cynical occult detective John Constantine perhaps the best known of any of these.

Of course, the Constantine movie which already exists was essentially a stealth remake of 90s horror The Prophecy, with Tilda Swinton assuming the Christopher Walken rebel angel role, as much as it was a version of the Hellblazer comic, so there's also definitely precedent for inserting Constantine into an existing horror scenario.

A reframing of The Exorcist's narrative of a crisis of faith, and inner demons reflected in actual demons, around Constantine's knowledge of, but resistance to, the spiritual world beyond our own would be an engaging way of exploring the character within a single case and limited settings.

Besides, literally any movie featuring an exorcism scene (including the earlier Constantine) owes such a huge debt to the staging of The Exorcist that DC might as well commit and go all in on it.