Todd Phillips has called for cinemas to stop showing adverts before movies

He told Empire magazine: "Stop showing commercials before the movies.

We've paid for our tickets. We're excited to be there. The commercials tend to take the air out of the room."

Meanwhile, Todd previously blamed "woke culture" for ruining comedy filmmaking.

He made his name in Hollywood with outrageous comedies such as 'Road Trip', 'Old School' and 'The Hangover' trilogy but he won't be returning to the genre in a hurry because he doesn't want to deal with a social media witch hunt if people are offended by a perceived politically incorrect joke.

In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine in 2019, he said: "Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. There were articles written about why comedies don't work anymore - I'll tell you why, because all the f****** funny guys are like, 'F*** this s***, because I don't want to offend you.' It's hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter."

Todd admitted it was his previous work in the comedy genre and reluctance to return to it that inspired 2019's 'Joker'.

He said: "With all my comedies - I think that what comedies in general all have in common - is they're irreverent. So I go, 'How do I do something irreverent, but f*** comedy? Oh I know, let's take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.' And that's really where it came from."