Jared Leto is in talks to play a serial killer in director John Lee Hancock’s upcoming thriller The Little Things.
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According to Variety, the Warner Bros. movie will star Denzel Washington as a sheriff who joins forces with a detective played by Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek. The pair must work together to track down a sadistic serial killer but their different approaches to police work causes friction. The movie is due to start filming this Autumn.
The 47-year-old, who is also the lead singer in rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars, has a proven track record playing creepy characters, having starred as villain Niander Wallace in 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 and the Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad — so this looks like a great potential piece of casting.
However, Leto’s performance as a tattooed, shirtless Joker proved to be divisive among critics, with the character set for a revamp in upcoming origin film Joker, which will star Joaquin Phoenix as Batman’s green-haired nemesis.
Director Todd Phillips has said the movie will take on a more violent direction and not explicitly follow the comic books.
Leto will be looking to bounce back after his last movie, 2018’s The Outsider, received a disastrous reception from critics. The Japanese-American crime drama, which debuted on Netflix, currently has a 17% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes.
Leto won a best supporting actor Oscar in 2013 for his work as a trans character in the Dallas Buyers Club. He is set to star in upcoming Sony movie Moribus, which is based on the Marvel comic-book character with the same name.