Movies

Jared Leto’s Last 5 Movies: The Box Office Slump No One Saw Coming

Jared Leto’s Last 5 Movies: The Box Office Slump No One Saw Coming
Image credit: Legion-Media

Jared Leto has the Oscar and the range, but his recent films keep coming up short where it counts: the box office. Is one of Hollywood’s boldest chameleons losing his pull with moviegoers?

Jared Leto can flat-out act. That part is not in doubt. The problem is what happens when his name hits a marquee lately. Spoiler: not much. Here is where his last five theatrical runs have landed, what went sideways, and why the numbers are ugly even when the performances aren’t.

  • Tron: Ares (2025) – $59.9M worldwide (opening weekend)

    Disney dusted off the grid 15 years after Tron: Legacy, handed the reins to Joachim Ronning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), cast Leto as the program Ares, brought in Greta Lee and Evan Peters, coaxed Jeff Bridges back, and hired Nine Inch Nails for the score. On paper, that’s a flex. In reality, the launch face-planted: $33.5M domestic on opening weekend, when internal forecasts had it in the $45–50M range. Even with 67% of tickets coming from premium formats like IMAX and Dolby, it didn’t move the needle. Overseas added $26.7M for that first frame. China is still to come, but this was not the reboot signal Disney wanted on a reported $180M budget.

    Vitals: 119 minutes; IMDb 6.7/10; Rotten Tomatoes 55% critics, 87% audience; Letterboxd 2.8/5. In theaters now; if Disney sticks to its usual timing, figure early 2026 for Disney+.

  • Haunted Mansion (2023) – $117.4M worldwide

    Justin Simien assembled a murderers’ row: LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis… and Leto doing mo-cap for the Hatbox Ghost. The movie opened to $24M and promptly got crushed by the Barbie/Oppenheimer steamroller. The SAG-AFTRA strike meant zero cast promotion, which didn’t help, but the bigger issue was the $150M spend and a family film that didn’t connect. Deadline pegged Disney’s losses around $117M. For scale: it needed roughly $375M worldwide to sniff breakeven. It finished at $117M.

    Vitals: 123 minutes; IMDb 6.0/10; Rotten Tomatoes 38% critics, 84% audience; Letterboxd 2.6/5. Now streaming on Disney+; also on digital storefronts like Apple TV.

  • Morbius (2022) – $167.4M worldwide

    Daniel Espinosa’s Marvel vampire story (with Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris) opened at $39M, then cratered 74% in weekend two — among the nastier drops for a modern superhero release. Critics torched it (15% on Rotten Tomatoes), the internet turned it into a bit, and Sony misread the room by re-releasing it in theaters, where it eked out $310,665 across 1,037 screens. Yes, it technically covered its $75M production tab. No, that does not mean it was a win.

    "It’s Morbin’ Time."

    (The line isn’t in the movie. The meme outgrossed the movie’s reputation.) Vitals: 104 minutes; IMDb 5.1/10; Rotten Tomatoes 15% critics, 71% audience; Letterboxd 1.6/5. Streaming on Netflix; also rentable/buyable via Apple TV and Prime Video.

  • House of Gucci (2021) – $153.2M worldwide

    Here’s the outlier that almost worked. Ridley Scott directs Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Salma Hayek, and Leto (as Paolo Gucci, in a swing-for-the-fences turn that split audiences). It launched with $14.4M over Thanksgiving 2021 — the best opening for an adult drama during that phase of the pandemic — and legged out to $153M worldwide. The rub: with a $75M production budget plus marketing, insiders pegged the breakeven target closer to $200–225M. Leto still nabbed SAG and Critics’ Choice nominations.

    Vitals: 158 minutes; IMDb 6.6/10; Rotten Tomatoes 61% critics, 83% audience; Letterboxd 2.9/5. Streaming on Prime Video.

  • The Little Things (2021) – $30.8M worldwide

    Context matters here. John Lee Hancock’s serial-killer thriller (with Denzel Washington and Rami Malek) dropped in January 2021, when roughly 44% of theaters were still closed and Warner Bros. was doing day-and-date on HBO Max. It still topped the box office with a $4.7M opening, but the hybrid release kneecapped theatrical legs. Final worldwide total: $30.8M against a $30M budget — marketing not included. Leto’s turn as suspect Albert Sparma earned him Golden Globe and SAG nominations.

    Vitals: 128 minutes; IMDb 6.3/10; Rotten Tomatoes 44% critics, 67% audience; Letterboxd 2.6/5. Available to rent/buy on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Fandango At Home, and Google Play.

Now for the part studios actually care about. Combined, these five titles pulled in $528.7M worldwide on roughly $480M in production costs. Sounds almost fine until you remember two things: marketing commonly matches production, and studios generally keep about half the box office. Realistically, this slate needed something like $1.2B worldwide just to break even. It didn’t sniff half that.

"Is safe to say Jared Leto is box office poison now?"

That question from a Reddit thread pretty much sums up the mood. To be fair, Leto keeps getting recognition from awards bodies, and the work itself is often interesting. But audience enthusiasm is not translating to tickets, whether it’s a culty Disney sequel, a theme-park movie with a stacked ensemble, or a Marvel-adjacent antihero that became a meme for all the wrong reasons.

Can he turn it around? Maybe. He’s too talented to count out, and one well-aimed crowd-pleaser can flip a narrative fast. Right now, though, the scoreboard is what it is. What do you think: temporary cold streak, or has the theatrical appetite for Leto’s brand of all-in intensity just cooled off?