Disney's Cruella trailer has huge Joker vibes

The prequel set to bring the character to a whole new audience.

Disney's Cruella trailer has huge Joker vibes

The first trailer for Disney's Cruella has launched and it looks fantastic. For this origin story about Cruella de Vil, the 101 Dalmations villain, Disney has retro-fitted a back story a young Cruella that takes place in '70s England.

The look is superb, with Emma Stone nailing the character. She is definitely a work in progress here, someone who has yet to fulfil her true evil but you start to see aspects of the fur-obsessed criminal straight away.

And this trailer is way darker than we were expecting - Disney is definitely doubling down on the deviousness of the character from this first look.

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The whole tone of the thing is very Joker-lite and this goes for the tagline, too: Brilliant. Bad. A little bit mad. And the look, well, it's another DC favourite that it looks like it's taking a leaf from and that's Harley Quinn. Given Disney owns Marvel, this is a little cheeky.

Disney has revealed that the Cruella release date is 28 May 2021 and also stars Emma Thompson and Mark Strong, with Glen Close - who played the character in the '90 live-action remake of the cartoon - in as producer.

Marc Chacksfield
Content Director

As Content Director of Shortlist, Marc likes nothing more than to compile endless lists of an evening by candlelight. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.