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<\/a>I like that everyone but Jared Leto seems confused to be there. (via Disney)<\/p>\nTron Ares opened last weekend, to a domestic box office haul of $33 million, which seems incredibly robust for a movie no one asked for, and yet was still, according to analysts, $10 million below projections<\/a>. This was, obviously, a massive disappointment for a film budgeted at $180 million. The 15-years-late sequel to Tron Legacy, itself a 28-years-late sequel to Tron, bafflingly starred Jared Leto, and now, (30s radio voice) the industry rags are calling it curtains for the ostrich-faced oddball!<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Tron\u2019 May Mark End of Jared Leto\u2019s Franchise-Leading Days,\u201d wrote The Hollywood Reporter. <\/p>\n \u201cThe \u2018Tron: Ares\u2019 Flop Will Probably End Jared Leto\u2019s Leading Man Career,\u201d added The Wrap.<\/p>\n These headlines, meanwhile, seemed to have the average moviegoer wondering, \u201cwait, Jared Leto had a leading man career?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s true, sort of! <\/p>\n Back in 2022, Leto starred in his very own superhero movie, playing the vampire Michael Morbius in the famously disastrous Morbius, debuting to anemic box office and eventual memes and Razzie nominations. Sample headline from then<\/a>: \u201cJared Leto Used a Wheelchair for \u2018Morbius\u2019 Bathroom Breaks to Stay in Character, Director Says.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The studio later mistook the ironic Morbius memes for genuine interest and put it back into theaters, at which point it promptly bombed again. Funny stuff, but this was the same Sony-Marvel division that brought us Madame Web (a masterpiece, in its way<\/a>), so it\u2019s hard to blame it all on Leto. <\/p>\n Yet somehow, here Leto was again \u201ctoplining\u201d a franchise picture, despite increasingly loud whispers about him being a sex pest, and an expos\u00e9 <\/a>back in June detailing \u201cnine allegations from women who described disturbing conduct, ranging from flirtatious overtures when they were minors to episodes of exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n Actually, \u201cwhispers\u201d isn\u2019t quite right. People have been calling Jared Leto a creep out loud for many years. It just never seems to effect him. The same article notes a New York Post item<\/a> about Leto from 2005 with the lede \u201cJared Leto Likes \u2018Em Young.\u201d <\/p>\n The New York Post alleged that he was more interested in groups of teenage models staying at the Maritime Hotel. \u201cGirls from IMG, Elite, Next and Women are staying there, and Jared has been hitting on all of them,\u201d an anonymous source told the paper. \u201cHe\u2019s a serial texter. He is constantly texting these other 16- and 17-year-old girls. It\u2019s really kind of creepy.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s been 20 years since that Post piece and four months since the Airmail expos\u00e9 (and varying years from countless other sly references like this one<\/a>), but Leto was still out doing a full promotional tour for Tron Ares. In fact, it sounds like Leto was a driving force behind the movie getting made in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first iteration of the [Ares] script was a different movie, but it had a character named Ares,\u201d screenwriter Jesse Wigutow told<\/a> Polygon for an Oct. 11 story.<\/p>\n The version ultimately was shelved by Disney. But Leto wouldn\u2019t give up. It didn\u2019t hurt that he had a powerful ally in his corner \u2014 Sean Bailey, who was hired to run Disney\u2019s live-action studio in 2010 by former Disney topper Rich Ross after he produced Tron: Legacy. And he also had goodwill from his lauded earlier dramatic work in Dallas Buyers Club (winning him a supporting actor Oscar) and Requiem for a Dream. The pitch worked, and by 2017, Leto was elevated to producer, and the movie\u2019s narrative was reframed so that the protagonist became Ares, his character. Leto not only got his Tron movie \u2014 he was now the star. (Bailey, the movie\u2019s chief proponent within the studio, was shown the door last year, but has a producing deal at Disney.) [THR<\/a>]<\/p>\n So, to recap, Leto apparently had enough goodwill from Dallas Buyers Club (in 2013) and Requiem for a Dream (in 2000!) to get an entire Tron sequel redesigned around his character and essentially double his (\u201cseven-figure\u201d) fee by getting a producer credit. And then despite the studio head who cosigned it all leaving last year, the movie still got made, released, and heavily promoted by its star actor. That kind of lame duck inertia isn\u2019t unheard of in Hollywood, I suppose, but it is strange the way things always seem to work out for Jared Leto.<\/p>\n It all seems hard to explain, possibly because trying to write anything about Jared Leto always ends up being exhausting. It took me a week just to finish this, which I originally envisioned as a straightforward box office recap. Aside from all the (allegedly!) being creep and enjoying underage girls stuff (the story well told here<\/a>), there are also whispers that Leto is everything from \u201can op,\u201d a \u201cCIA plant<\/a>,\u201d to \u201crunning a cult straight out of a true crime docuseries<\/a>.\u201d (Relatedly, the Jared Leto True Anon episode<\/a> is a great listen). <\/p>\n It\u2019d all be hilarious that people could think such things about the guy who put himself in a wheelchair<\/a> because he got too fat while trying to method act as Mark David Chapman for a movie no one saw and sent his used condoms to his costars<\/a> while method acting to play an evil clown. And yet, there always seems to be juuuust enough evidence for every grandiose-sounding Leto accusation to at least go, \u201chuh, that is weird\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n