It's no secret that DC Studios co-CEO and filmmaker James Gunn isn't exactly a fan of Suicide Squad star Jared Leto. As a result, the odds of the Oscar winner ever playing The Joker aren't just slim, but almost certainly downright zero.
The actor briefly reprised his most divisive role in Zack Snyder's Justice League. Before that, the response to his 2016 turn as the Clown Prince of Crime closed the door on a planned Joker/Harley Quinn movie, and he ended up being left out of Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey.
Now, scooper @MyTimeToShineH has claimed, "In Peacemaker season 2, Peacemaker makes fun of 30 Seconds to Mars, so you can be sure Leto isn’t coming back."
We don't have any additional details, but Leto is the frontman for the band 30 Seconds to Mars, and if Gunn is using one of the DCU's characters to tear into them, that surely tells you all you need to know regarding how he feels about the actor and musician.
In 2015, Gunn went on what he described as an "Ambien-fuelled Periscope session" in which he made a series of derogatory comments about the actor, including insinuating that the Oscar-winner sleeps with underage girls. He's also alluded to that on social media, and in a deleted 2012 Tweet, Gunn wrote, "Driving home from Vegas trading stories about what a dick Jared Leto is."
In January, Leto was accused of sexual of sexual misconduct by at least nine women. Some allege that they were underage when the Oscar-winning 30 Seconds to Mars frontman engaged in sexually charged conversations or made forceful advances on them.
Gunn has largely avoided sharing his thoughts on Leto in recent years, including during the press tour for The Suicide Squad in 2021.
"I just don’t know why Joker would be in the Suicide Squad," he said at the time. "He wouldn’t be helpful in that type of war situation. I wanted to create what I thought of as the Suicide Squad. For me to react to David’s movie would make it the shadow of David’s movie. I wanted it to be its own thing completely."
"When Warner Bros. said they wanted me to do this, I watched the first movie for the first time, and I called them back and said, what do I have to keep from this movie? And they said, 'nothing,'" Gunn continued. "They said, listen, we would love it if Margot’s in the movie but she doesn’t have to be. You could come up with all new characters or you could keep all the same characters."
Peacemaker season 2 follows Christopher 'Chris' Smith, aka Peacemaker, the vigilante superhero, as he struggles to reconcile his past with his newfound sense of purpose while continuing to kick righteous evildoer butt in his misguided quest for peace at any cost.
He discovers an alternate world where life is everything he wishes it could be. But this discovery also forces him to face his traumatic past and take the future into his own hands.
Peacemaker season 2 premieres on HBO on August 21. Check back here later this week for our review.