Jared Leto has been cast to play Hugh Hefner in a biopic.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) will direct the planned project about the Playboy founder, who died last week aged 91. He's reportedly had his sights set on a biopic of Hefner since 2007, and the film is now in early development at Ratner's production company.
"Jared is an old friend," Ratner said. "When he heard I got the rights to Hef's story, he told me, 'I want to play him. I want to understand him.' And I really believe Jared can do it. He's one of the great actors of today... My goal is to do the motion picture as an event."
Leto's casting has been in the works for a while – back in April, Ratner invited Leto to the Playboy Mansion for the premiere of Amazon's docu-series American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story, an occasion which also marked Hefner's 91st birthday. Ratner hoped to introduce Leto to Hefner that evening, knowing that he would play him in the film, but due to Hefner's waning health he wasn't greeting guests.
"There's enough footage on Hefner out there that Jared will be able to get as much information as he wants," Ratner said. So here's the part where we all get to wonder nervously if Leto will go method to play Hefner, just like he did to play The Joker.
