Jared Leto will get his toys out of storage once more. The Oscar-winning actor will reprise his Joker for Zack Snyder’s forthcoming revamp of Justice League, informally known as the Snyder Cut.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on Wednesday, but provided no further context about how Leto’s take on the famed Batman villain will fit into Snyder’s HBO Max project. A source told Vanity Fair, however, that Leto is set to play a previously unseen version of Joker in the event series.
That would jibe with fan speculation about the revised Justice League, which is expected to include an extended “Knightmare” alternate-reality sequence first revealed in Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In August, eagle-eyed fans spotted the Joker’s famed calling card floating through the Knightmare reality in a teaser for Justice League. (DC has leaned into the idea of multiverse realities recently, casting Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck to play different versions of Batman in the forthcoming film The Flash.)
Leto did not appear in the theatrical version of Justice League. He previously played Joker in David Ayer’s violent 2016 feature Suicide Squad. During that film’s production, he rather famously dove head-first into playing Joker. Will Smith said Leto had undergone such a method transformation, in fact, that Smith had never really met his lauded co-star.
“We worked together for six months and we’ve never exchanged a word outside of ‘Action!’ and ‘Cut!’ I literally have not met him yet,” Smith said in a 2015 interview. “So, the first time I see him will be ‘Hey, Jared. What’s up?’”
In addition to keeping his distance from his co-stars, Leto also sent them grotesque gifts. According to co-star Adam Beach, that included giving Margot Robbie, who played Harley Quinn in the film, a live rat.
When Suicide Squad finally arrived in theaters amid a wave of poor reviews, however, Leto’s role had been whittled down significantly. Asked shortly after release what had happened, Leto expressed disappointment. “Were there any that didn’t get cut? I’m asking you, were there any that didn’t get cut?” he asked in a 2015 interview with IGN. “There were so many scenes that got cut from the movie, I couldn’t even start. If I die anytime soon, it’s probably likely that it’ll surface somewhere. That’s the good news about the death of an actor is all that stuff seems to come out.”
Despite the way Joker was handled in Suicide Squad, Leto’s take on the character remained something of a focus for Warner Bros. and DC Comics. In 2017, it was reported that Leto and Robbie would reprise their respective roles for a movie focused solely on Joker and Harley Quinn. But that announcement came not long after Warner Bros. revealed Todd Phillips had planned to make his own version of a standalone Joker movie with a new actor playing the character. Leto’s movie never came to pass; Phillips cast Joaquin Phoenix as Joker, and Phoenix went on to win an Academy Award for his work.