Exclusive: Jared Leto Will Only Be Joker If Ben Affleck Is Batman, Pushing WB For Comeback
Giant Freakin Robot has it that Jared Leto is holding playing Joker again until Ben Affleck officially returns to the DCEU as Batman
Update: Jared Leto will not be continuing his role as the Joker in the new DC Universe
With the DC Extended Universe splintered in a couple of different directions in some of its latest offerings (with more to come) it’s sometimes hard to follow just where guys like Jared Leto and Ben Affleck, as Joker and Batman respectively, exist in certain storylines. While it didn’t look like we would see too much more of them going forward, that might not be the case.
Giant Freakin Robot has the exclusive from our trusted and proven source, that Jared Leto is pushing hard to get Ben Affleck back in the cape and cowl as Batman. Leto has said he’d only come back to play Joker if he was opposite this version of the Caped Crusader. Jared Leto wants Batfleck to make a comeback in the DC Extended Universe in a big way.
The door is apparently wide open for this on-screen battle between Jared Leto and Ben Affleck to happen with the way the DC Extended Universe is starting to play out. Originally, it appeared that Ben Affleck was going to meet his end when he appeared in The Flash next year. Some assumed this would be the chance to, in some ways, kill off his character and end that story arc once and for all. But recently it’s come out that director Andy Muschietti and company don’t have that in the plans. Fearing a Ben Affleck-as-Batman death would overshadow the arc for Ezra Miller’s Flash, it looks like Ben Affleck will simply fade out rather than meet an untimely end.
And Jared Leto reentering the DC Extended Universe as Joker looks like it is in the proverbial cards as well. Giant Freakin Robot had another exclusive last month that a plan was in the works to bring Leto back into the mix. This was going to involve his Joker teaming up with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor. It could be part of a Legion of Doom project, putting together all manner of supervillains on screen together in an effort to mirror some of the ensemble mix we’ve seen in movies like Justice League. That group has had members from all over the DC villain ranks, but as of now the two biggest names that the DCEU has actually introduced so far are Jared Leto as Joker and Eisenberg as Luthor. Black Manta played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen in the Aquaman franchise would also qualify.
If Jared Leto is, in fact, holding out for Ben Affleck to return as Batman before he returns as Joker, we could be waiting a while. These kinds of castings and subsequent productions sometimes move at a glacial pace. And unfortunately, it’s still tough to put a lot of stock in the overall world-building from the folks at DC. That’s because so far, the franchise has been somewhat disconnected in and amongst its offerings with different versions of characters popping up in other, stand-alone productions.
When we last saw Jared Leto and Ben Affleck on the big screen together, it was at the end of Zack Snyder’s Justice League during the Knightmare dream sequence. For Affleck’s Bruce Wayne, it was a grim and bleak picture of the future in which Superman had gone off the reservation and now the sheriff in town (such as it were) was a maniacal Joker. The psychological showdown between the two was one of the best scenes in the entire film. They each remind the other of the loved ones lost along the way while entering a tentative truce going forward. Did it make a lot of sense for the narrative arc? Not really. Was it a cool scene? You bet.
Will we see Jared Leto and Ben Affleck face off again as Batman and Joker, this time actually throwing down rather than talking it out? Let’s hope so. There is still more meat on the bone in this story and both actors played their respective parts well even if the stories were lacking at times. I think it warrants another shot to see them face off in a future film.
