American actor and rock musician Jared Leto, who played the Joker in David Eyre's "Suicide Squad", will return to this role.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Joker has joined the cast of Justice League.

Leto will take part in the filming of additional scenes for the version directed by Zack Snyder.

Together with him, artists Ben Affleck, Ray Fisher and Amber Heard returned to work on the project.

They have already played Batman, Cyborg and Queen Meru, respectively.

Earlier it was also reported that the upcoming film will include new episodes with Gal Gadot, who plays Wonder Woman, and Henry Cavill as Superman.

The Joker, unlike these characters, was not in the 2017 film.

The introduction of the hero into the script suggests that there will be a lot of new material in Zach Snyder's "Justice League".

Jared Leto's portrayal of the Joker will also serve as a link between Justice League and Suicide Squad.

On the production of the latter, Zack Snyder worked as an executive producer.

The filmmaker planned to take a direct part in the creation of a single cinematic universe based on DC comics.

  • A scene from the film "Justice League"

  • © kinopoisk.ru

In 2019, Jared Leto stated that he would not mind playing the comic book villain again.

“I would definitely go back to playing the Joker.

As always, it all depends on the scenario and other circumstances, ”he said in the podcast Variety and iHeart.

Also, sources from The Hollywood Reporter report that producers John Berg and Jeff Jones have dropped out of the team of the updated film.

They were involved in the 2017 version, with Zach Snyder and then Joss Whedon directing.

Now Jones and Berg intend to remove their names from the credits, since they did not work on "editing Snyder" and did not participate in additional filming.

They previously left Warner Bros.

In addition, in the summer of 2020, it became known that Jones and Berg had a conflict with the performer of the role of Cyborg, Ray Fisher.

The actor claims that Joss Whedon, who replaced Snyder as director, behaved “rude, offensive, unprofessional and completely unacceptable” during filming, and Jeff Jones and John Berg did not interfere with him.

Nevertheless, it is believed that these differences were not the reason for the end of the cooperation between the producers and the director.

Director's Cut History

For 2016, Zach Snyder managed to complete most of the work on the film "Justice League".

In January 2017, a four-hour piece was ready.

However, representatives of the Warner Bros.

it was expected that the film would be twice as short, and under Snyder's direction the tape was reduced to two hours and 20 minutes.

  • Zach Snyder on the set of the film "Justice League"

  • © kinopoisk.ru

The picture required some work before it was released.

However, the director was unable to continue working on Justice League at the post-production stage: in March 2017, his daughter died, and Snyder left the project.

To avoid disrupting its November premiere, Warner Bros.

invited comic book author, screenwriter and director Joss Whedon to the post of director.

Prior to that, he directed The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron under the Marvel umbrella.

With a budget of $ 300 million, Justice League grossed nearly $ 660 million worldwide - a modest amount compared to Whedon's Avengers box office of $ 1.5 billion. 

Rotten Tomatoes had a critically acclaimed freshness rating of just 40% on the film.

The audience was more supportive - the feed received 71% of positive views from viewers.

The fans were unhappy with this state of affairs.

The hashtag #releasetheSnydercut (“release a version of Snydercut”) has spread on social media, and over 100,000 people signed the petition on Change.org in just five days.

The hashtag in their posts was also used by the actors of the Justice League Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck.

The start of work on the Snyder version was announced in May 2020.

It is expected to spend between $ 20 million and $ 30 million on the rework, and the reimagined film will become a four-episode miniseries.

It is slated to be available on the HBO Max platform as early as 2021.