Jared Leto is an actor known for getting into his roles, something that made his upcoming turn as The Joker in Suicide Squad an especially bizarre experience for his castmates. Now the actor has chosen his next project, and it’s one that looks to displace him in both time and culture. The Dallas Buyers Club actor just signed on to The Outsider. Perhaps now the oft-delayed film will actually get made.
The Outsider was a 2011 Black List choice and ever since then there have been attempts to turn it from a great unproduced screenplay, into a great produced screenplay. The story follows an American soldier, who will now be played by Jared Leto, who’s imprisoned in Japan following World War II. He finally achieves freedom thanks to his cellmate, a member of Yakuza. Now he owes the criminal organization a debt and he sets himself to repaying it. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Danish director Martin Zandvliet is set to helm this one, marking his English language debut.
With production set to begin this fall, The Outsider may finally happen after several years of attempts. Originally, Safe House director Daniel Espinosa had Michael Fassbender attached to star back in 2012. After that plan fell through, for unknown reasons, Tom Hardy took on the starring role and another director, Takashi Miike, was going to use The Outsider to make his English-language directorial debut. That plan fell through back in early 2014. Since then The Outsider had apparently gone silent. Now it appears that production is back on once again.
Jared Leto is particularly selective when it comes to his roles. August’s Suicide Squad will be his first appearance on screen since his Oscar award-winning turn in Dallas Buyers Club. It’s clear that there has been a lot of interest in Andrew Baldwin’s screenplay for The Outsider as the project has somehow remained afloat even though it looked to be dead in the water multiple times. Leto has obviously found something of interest here. There’s no word on what co-stars he’ll spend his time freaking out on this new film. The Outsider is described as an action thriller, so it may make for a solid follow-up to Suicide Squad. As much as anything can be anyway.
We’ll have to wait and see if this one actually begins filming as expected before we’re 100% sure that its happening. The Outsider has been close to being made before when stars and directors have backed out. Hopefully after those false starts they now have the kinks worked out and we’ll finally get to see this well-respected screenplay.
