Director David Ayer Vouches For Jared Leto’s Joker, Downplays Rumors Of Suicide Squad Set Antics

Perhaps more so than any other DCEU film before it, Suicide Squad struggled to do good on its abundant potential.

Despite an A-list cast and a competent director in David Ayer (see: End of Watch, Fury), a convoluted story and alleged studio meddling marred Task Force X’s big-screen debut to such an extent that, even after scoring $745 million worldwide, Suicide Squad was widely considered to be a major disappointment.

That’s a pity, really, but it means the upcoming Suicide Squad 2 will offer Task Force X a shot at redemption – Jared Leto included. That’s not to say that his performance as Batman’s arch nemesis was necessarily bad; simply that the Joker was woefully underused in Suicide Squad‘s final cut, and David Ayer has since gone on record to voice his regret of not angling the story in such a way that the Clown Prince of Crime was the film’s true villain, as opposed to Enchantress.

But after Leto recently confirmed his place in the Suicide Squad sequel and Gotham City Sirens, David Ayer took to Twitter to vouch for his performance as the Joker, before downplaying those reports of on-set antics. The Tweet read: “It was a pleasure working with Jared Leto. He was a total gentlemen [sic]. Rumors are more exciting than truth.”

In case you missed it, here’s a refresher of Leto’s frank comments from yesterday, courtesy of Australian radio show Kyle and Jackie O:

There’s so much hype and bullshit about [what happened with Suicide Squad], but I think it’s just a fun thing to talk about. Even when the movie came out, there was so much misrepresentation about what went down, about the ‘method acting’ crap – it’s just that 90% of it wasn’t true, and you can’t even… It takes on a life of its own

Indeed, this is by no means the first time that David Ayer has been vocal about the DCEU on Twitter; late last month, the Bright filmmaker debunked rumors linking him with the exit door with a single picture of the Gotham City Sirens comic. Of course, there’s still the small matter of the newly-announced Joker and Harley Quinn spinoff, which may well overtake Sirens on the DC slate. Stay tuned for more on that front.

Suicide Squad 2, meanwhile, is purportedly targeting a mid-2018 start ahead of an expected release in 2019.