After weeks of speculation, Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto has officially signed on to play The Joker in DC's upcoming villain movie, Suicide Squad. Will Smith also confirmed his involvement as Deadshot and Tom Hardy, who played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, will take on the role of Rick Flagg, Deadline notes. Warner Brothers also announced that the film will be released in 2D and 3D.
David Ayer (Fury, End of Watch) will direct the film, which will also include Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street), Jai Courtney (Unbroken, Divergent) and Cara Delevinge. The movie is set for an August 2016 release.
This will be Leto's first try at a superhero (or supervillain) film while Smith (Hancock) and Hardy are old pros. However, Leto is no stranger to playing characters on the fringe of society. His breakout role came in 2000 as drug addict Harry Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream. He portrayed Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, in 2007's Chapter 27 and, most recently, he won an Oscar for his role as a transgender woman with AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club. And then there's this scary laugh from 2009's Mr. Nobody.
"I'm not really in a hurry to jump into another film unless it's something that I absolutely can't say no to," he told MTV News when asked about Suicide Squad recently. "I want to make sure it's special because the previous experiences were really, really special and fortunately I have music and other things in my life to keep me really busy."
Jack Nicholson and the late Heath Ledger both portrayed The Joker in other Batman films. Leto has big shoes to fill (see below).
