Jared Leto Returning For Suicide Squad 2 And Gotham City Sirens

As the internet continues to lose their mind over the shocking announcement of a Joker origin story film – from Martin Scorsese, no less – there’s another interesting, and related, development worth looking at. Buried within Deadline’s report is the fact that Jared Leto will reprise his role as the Clown Prince of Crime in both Suicide Squad 2 and Gotham City Sirens. Though from what we understand, he won’t be involved in the origin story.

This is interesting for a few reasons. For one, given how divisive the actor’s performance was, many thought that Warner Bros. would reduce the Joker’s role in the franchise going forward, and while we don’t know how involved he’ll be in both of those aforementioned movies, hearing that the character will be back indicates that the studio isn’t letting him go just yet. Not only that, but Leto hasn’t seemed terribly interested in returning to the DCEU and has actually been a bit critical of it in recent times, so it’s certainly surprising to hear that he’s now signed on for two more movies.

Of course, story-wise, this all makes perfect sense, and we can only hope that Mr. J’s role moving forward will be handled a lot better than it was in Suicide Squad. It’s no secret that the portrayal of the Joker in that film rubbed many people the wrong way, as we mentioned above, and if Warner Bros. wants to change the public perception of him, they’ll need to make some serious alterations to the character for his next appearance in the franchise.

Whether they’ll be able to do that or not though is impossible to say at this early stage. After all, both projects are still so far out, and neither have release dates yet. In fact, Suicide Squad 2 doesn’t even have a director at this point. As the films start to come together though, we’ll no doubt learn more about how the Clown Prince of Crime will factor into them and seeing as we’re willing to give both Leto and the studio another chance, we can safely say that we’re excited to see how the DCEU’s Joker evolves from here.