The actor said John Lee Hancock’s thriller is the type of project that is most likely to appear on TV – and that’s not a bad thing.
“The Little Things” is a return to the serial killer films of the 1990s, such as “Se7en” and “The Silence of the Lambs”, the morally complicated, medium-budget types of adult entertainment that Hollywood no longer does. Jared Leto, who plays the film’s scary villain alongside detectives Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, spoke to IndieWire about why this is the case.
“It all comes down to a financial decision by the studios,” said Leto. “They think they can make a lot more money with films from bigger events. They found that for television, if they can do something that is episodic, people still like that kind of story. I’m not saying that they should stop making movies like ‘The Little Things’, but I think if you talk about how [the HBO show] ‘The Undoing’, people like to spend more time with these characters. And there is less stigma coming and going from television to the cinema ”.
“The Little Things” is one of 17 Warner Bros. titles. 2021 that go day and day on HBO Max and available theaters. It exists in the weird gray area of the COVID era of visual narrative, in which films aimed at major theatrical cuts can now be watched at home along with TV episodes.
In the film by screenwriter and director John Lee Hancock, Leto is Albert Sparma, a scary introvert who may or may not be a murderer of women, and is being chased by Washington and Malek playing two ruined policemen with their own demons. It’s the kind of ambitious crime story that, in the 21st century, you’d expect to see on TV.
“Who would have thought five or 10 years ago, we would have thought that people would just like to watch shorter forms of content. The opposite is true. People like a TikTok, but they also like to be connected and engaged for eight to ten episodes, ”said Leto. But he also hopes that the closure of cinemas by the pandemic will reinvigorate trips to the cinema.
Rami Malek and Jared Leto in “The Little Things”
Warner Bros / Courtesy Everett Collection
“Maybe we’ll see post-COVID that people want to watch different types of movies, but my point [isn’t] that everyone should just be comic book movies, but studios look at the size of budgets and what drives people to enter the cinema and what’s worth their time and energy, and it probably makes more sense to spend $ 200 million and make a billion than spending $ 30 million and earning $ 80 [million]. I am not saying that this is my business plan. It’s just maybe their business plan, ”he said.
Leto has a lot of experience with big budget films, providing his demented version of the Joker for DC in “Suicide Squad” 2016 – which he will repeat shortly in the next “Justice League” Snyder Cut on HBO Max – and starring in the next “Morbius ”For Marvel. This film, Sony Pictures’ third swing in the MCU, recently jumped to January 2022, when a March premiere became impossible.
Until then, “The Little Things” should satisfy Leto fans with a distinct, well, very Leto performance. Seu Sparma has long, straight, sticky hair, dead eyes, a firm forehead, a voice that is barely a library whisper and a way of walking that almost feels like levitation. He also teases his opponents with an unhealthy sense of humor. Or, as Leto suggests, a great guy: “I found him very charming and with a fun and wild sense of humor,” he said.
“I was attracted to the opportunity to do something that was transformative, not just psychological or emotional, but physical as well,” said Leto, who has reinvented himself in many of his roles, including his turning to the Oscar winner as a trans woman with HIV for “Dallas Buyers Club”. Let’s not forget his infamous pigtails in David Fincher’s 2002 “Panic Room”, or his engaging role as a spiral addict in Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream”. (He will return to work with Aronofsky on the Blumhouse “Adrift” project.)
Jared Leto in “Moribus”
Sony Pictures / Courtesy of Everett Collection
For “The little things,” he said, “I had eyes of a different color, a different nose, different teeth, other prostheses, there was a walk and a lecture. The voice was very important. He’s a very hypnotic person in a strange way. He is comfortable in his skin, but other people are uncomfortable around him. It doesn’t fit into society so well. He lives in the darkest shadows. “
His character “Morbius” was physically demanding, as the superhero he plays, Michael Morbius, has a rare blood disease that ends up causing vampirism. “My character has a rare disease that only 900 people in the world have, and I tried to educate myself in the best way possible. I move from someone who is very sick and dying to someone who is very healthy and strong, and paints something that is monstrous. I have these three different degrees. There was a great physical commitment to the role. “
Leto said that such presentations are not easily deleted at the end of the day.
“You have weeks or months reading FBI transcripts, watching all kinds of footage, consuming a lot of material,” he said. If you make a physical commitment, like a walk, a conversation, or a diet, if you do it long enough during the day, you will have a residue of it. I played some intense characters, and it’s safe to say that they always piss me off. “
“The Little Things” starts airing on HBO Max on Friday, January 29.
Sign up: Stay on top of the latest film and TV news! Sign up to receive our newsletters by email here.