Anna Daniels
Of course, this raises the question of why Leto — who was famously, er, dedicated to the role — wasn’t simply asked to make a cameo in Birds of Prey. There are several potential answers to that question, and they range from, “Yeah, that pretty much makes sense,” to “Damn, that’s cold.”
The most diplomatic answer would be that the actor was probably too busy to simply drop by the Birds set. He’d been hard at work on the Sony-Marvel flick Morbius for some time, not to mention the John Lee Hancock thriller The Little Things with Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, which is currently in post-production.
The slightly less diplomatic answer: Warner Bros. and DC Films may not have been too keen on seeing Leto’s face around the Birds set, due to the gripes the actor had around the very existence of director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker (gripes which were unfortunately made public). It was reported that Leto actively tried to sabotage Phoenix’s movie, going so far as to ask his music manager Irving Azoff to pull a few strings and get the film killed. This is, of course, the very same film that grossed over $1 billion worldwide, and won Phoenix a Best Actor Oscar.
The even less diplomatic answer: Warner Bros. and DC Films would like for Leto to kindly step off. Joker won’t appear in James Gunn’s soft reboot The Suicide Squad, and two planned movies featuring Leto’s version have been shelved; it’s pretty plain that the studios (like most fans) simply weren’t psyched about the actor’s take on the character, which at this point is looking very much like a one-and-done.
Written by: Looper
