Internet Not Getting Behind Jared Leto as Hugh Hefner

Jared Leto will be playing Hugh Hefner in a biopic directed by Brett Ratner, according to the Hollywood Reporter. And let's just say that's not exactly a sentence making the internet happy right now. Ratner, who is also planning to reboot the talk show Playboy After Dark, which Hef hosted in the 1960s, definitely thinks it's a good idea—"When (Leto) 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"—but many, many others do not agree:

• The Los Angeles Times rounds up a number of hilarious tweets on the matter, like this one: "As America’s conscience, Jimmy Kimmel needs to speak out tonight against Jared Leto playing Hugh Hefner in a Brett Ratner film."

• Sample headlines on the subject. From Silver Screen Beat: "Jared Leto will star in Brett Ratner’s Hugh Hefner biopic that literally nobody asked for." From Vice: "Jared Leto Is Going to Play Hugh Hefner in a New Biopic for Some Reason."
• A common thread running through the complaints is that everyone involved, particularly Hef and Ratner, is "sleazy." If you've forgotten why Ratner might be considered such, this interview in which he talked about "banging" Olivia Munn back when "she wasn't Asian" and this one in which he said he forced Lindsay Lohan to get checked for STDs before he would sleep with her might refresh your memory. He's been called "the epitome of casting couch" and "an exact stereotype of a sleazy ... movie director who keeps a murphy bed in his office." (And then there was that gay slur he used.)
• As for what he thinks of Hef, Ratner penned a remembrance of him for Wednesday's issue of the Hollywood Reporter: "Hef was my friend. He was the coolest," it opens, and goes on to say that the Playboy founder "was trying to make this country a better and fairer place."
• Not everyone is upset; Men's Journal went with the headline "Ageless, Bearded Mountaineer Jared Leto to Star in Hugh Hefner’s Biopic" and its article speculates Leto could be nominated for an Oscar for the role.

(More Hugh Hefner stories.)