Like many of you, I was also surprised to hear Jesse Eisenberg being cast as Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor in the upcoming BATMAN VS SUPERMAN. Not to take away from the big distraction of yesterday, that being the awesome reveal of the Batmobile and Ben Affleck suited up; but we have some Luthor news. There hasn’t been a lot said since the announcement of his casting in January, but in an interview with IGN he finally opened up.
On just how different his take will be:
"I don't know the history as well as the people making the movie, so I guess it's up to them to figure out how much they want to separate it from previous incarnations. But I will treat it like it's its own role. There's no way to play the history of the character played by other people, unless you do some kind of wink, but that doesn't seem like a responsible way to act. So I will just do it as though it's a character, in the same way you do a movie like The Double, which is a smaller movie — but you just kind of treat it like a character, and that's probably the best course of action, I think." When asked the really important quest of whether or not he would be going bald for the role, he responded: "I'm not allowed to say anything, because of their privacy."
On being attached to a big franchise he said:
"The character's really good, so it's like doing anything else. They make a lot of those movies, so if you're an actor in things, you will probably cross paths with it at some point. But the character's written really well. It's a really great role. The fact that it's in a big movie, you know, it seems like a character that would be in any kind of movie. It just happens to be in a bigger, flashier kind of thing."
When asked the really important question of whether or not he would be going bald for the role:
"I'm not allowed to say anything, because of their privacy."
You have to appreciate his honesty when he doesn't just pander to the movies audience by telling us he grew up on Superman and Batman. He didn't go on about having the bed sheets with the vintage yellow bat symbol that his mom washed on warm so they were never the same (sigh). Enthusiastic or not, I look forward to his interpretation of the iconic role; he played a terrific jackass in THE SOCIAL NETWORK, I'm sure he can expand on that.
How are you guys feeling Eisenberg as Luthor?
BATMAN VS SUPERMAN opens on May 6, 2016 and also stars Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Callan Mulvey, Tao Okamoto and Ray Fisher.