For someone with an Academy Award under their belt, Jared Leto doesn’t seem to be the most popular actor on the planet, although that probably has a lot to do with his eccentric approach to method acting amongst other things that his detractors are already fully aware of.

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Having trumped his success at the Oscars by winning back-to-back Razzies for his equally terrible performances in House of Gucci and Morbius, the “New Marvel Legend” has become even more of a laughing stock than usual. As a result, the first trailer for Disney’s Haunted Mansion reboot has evaporated in an instant, for the sole reason people are just discovering that he’s in it.

Yeah!! This is the vibe a Haunted Mansion movie should have!! The Hatbox Ghost sounds fantastic… still wish it wasn’t Jared Leto though

— Noah ⎊ (@NoahIsAHuman) May 16, 2023

as much as i am a haunted mansion (2003) stan, i am excited for this (other than jared leto being in it 🤢)

— libby (@willbondcaptain) May 16, 2023

Those are only a small selection of the reactions sweeping the social media sphere, but playing the Hatbox Ghost does raise questions about what exactly Leto did to get into character. Did he perform a seance? Was he killed and then resurrected from the dead? Or maybe, just maybe, he did what the majority of all actors do and turned up for work and did the job.

While Leto has starred in no shortage of good movies throughout his career, he’s essentially a walking meme at this stage that folks are fully expecting to do the most ridiculous things for the sake of a performance. Playing a ghost doesn’t sound like something in his wheelhouse for the sole reason that there’s no outlandish way of preparing to get into the correct mindset, which sort of makes it all the more fascinating.

There are of course other people in Haunted Mansion, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue.