It wouldn’t be a Blade Runner movie without a nasty villain, and Blade Runner 2049 has a pretty creepy antagonist. Jared Leto plays blind replicant engineer Niander Wallace, a stand-in of sorts for Joe Turkel’s Eldon Tyrell, but he wasn’t originally the first choice for the role. That would have been David Bowie.
Denis Villeneuve, Ryan Gosling, and Harrison Ford managed to top one of the most beloved sci-fi films in history with one of the all-time great sequels.
Warner Bros. and DC are making a lot of choices lately, and one of those choices is having multiple movies featuring the Joker, but not all featuring the actor who first played the character canonically in their universe. Jared Leto is not being courted for the Martin Scorsese-produced Joker origin movie, a move that makes sense considering they’re probably going for someone younger (but which does not make sense considering… who in the world was asking for a Joker origin movie??). Leto is, understandably, “a little confused” about the whole thing, but he also gets it. Kinda.
One of the more intriguing new characters in Blade Runner 2049 is Niander Wallace, played by professional cringe-inducer Jared Leto. Though the exact nature of his role — beyond “vaguely unnerving dude who makes Replicants” — remains to be seen, Niander appears to be a key figure in Denis Villeneuve’s highly-anticipated sequel. He’s also the subject of this new short film, which takes place in 2036 and is the first of three prequels that will help shed some light on the events that occurred over the 30 years between films.
It’s been a wild, wild week for the DCEU. First came the report on a new Joker origin story movie executive produced by Martin Scorsese and scripted by Todd Phillips, the man who puts the “Bro” in Warner Bros. But then WB topped themselves in the WTF department just one day later with news of a Joker and Harley Quinn romance film from the directors of Crazy Stupid Love. While Jared Leto won’t be participating in Scorsese’s bizarro origin film, the actor has confirmed his return for the Harley Quinn team-up, which has officially knocked Gotham City Sirens off the WB schedule (for now).
The spotlight in the DC Extended Universe is squarely on women right now. Wonder Woman is still tying moviegoers in knots; just one more good weekend will make it the second biggest DCEU movie in the U.S., and it could pass Batman v Superman for the top spot not long after. Princess Diana will get back in the spotlight in Justice League this fall, and last summer was all about Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn stealing scenes from Will Smith and the rest of the Suicide Squad. Basically DC sisters are doing it for themselves.