Those who wish someone other than Jesse Eisenberg had played Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice could have seen their dream come true if Leonardo DiCaprio had accepted the role. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Snyder said he spoke on the phone with Adam Driver about the villainous role and that he approached DiCaprio about playing the bald baddie, too.
When asked if DiCaprio showed any interest, Snyder said, “I think so.” Adding, “He had a lot of great ideas actually, just in the meeting. I think in the end, he was like ‘Eh, I don’t know.’ But he was really smart about the material and really smart about the character.”
“He was the one that mentioned to me the idea about Superman fighting the Justice League at some point,” Snyder added. As you know, we saw this plot point come to life in Snyder’s Justice League. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ He is a [comic guy]. I was like, ‘I’m going to put that over there.'”
Unsurprisingly, Leonardo DiCaprio refused the role. The actor appears to have a strict “No Superhero Movies” policy. He once told Timothée Chalamet that suiting up for superhero hijinks would be a mistake. After seeing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Chalamet began thinking about going the way of the superhero. During an interview with The New York Times, Chalamet revealed, “Well, Leonardo DiCaprio said to me, ‘No superhero movies, no hard drugs.’ Which I thought was very good,” Chalamet said. “I follow them both! But the movie that made me want to act is a superhero movie, ‘The Dark Knight.’ If the script was great, if the director was great, I’d have to consider it.”
Would Leonardo DiCaprio make a good Lex Luthor? Personally, I don’t see him gelling with the Snyderverse, but stranger castings have happened. I wonder if DiCaprio would have portrayed Luthor in a classic light instead of Eisenberg’s Zuckerbergian delivery. Who would you choose if you could cast DiCaprio as a comic book villain? He could have made for a good Hugo Strange, Mad Hatter, or Hush.