Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice star Jesse Eisenberg looks back at his short tenure playing Lex Luthor in the DCEU while giving blunt words of wisdom to Superman: Legacy‘s Nicholas Hoult.
“Don’t watch me,” Eisenberg said in an interview with Matt Donnelly at Variety Studio during the Sundance Film Festival. “Whenever you play a role you feel connected to it. There’s no way around it. Any time you do anything, even if it’s a movie that’s a Hollywood kind of thing, you connect.”
Jesse Eisenberg’s tenure as Lex Luthor in the DCEU
Eisenberg was cast by director Zack Snyder as the iconic Superman villain following his Oscar-nominated performance in 2010’s The Social Network. He portrayed Luthor as a complicated narcissist with a tragic backstory in contrast to the previous big-screen iterations of the character played by Gene Hackman in 1978’s Superman: The Movie and Kevin Spacey in 2006’s Superman Returns. Upon Batman v. Superman’s release, Eisenberg took the critical backlash to heart as DC fans were more used to Luthor as a mature criminal mastermind.
“I felt very personal about it,” Eisenberg said to Deadline in 2022. “The writer, Chris Terrio, is a very serious writer, and he’s a very emotional person. He thought a lot about my character, and I thought a lot about my character too. I talked with my acting coach about the character a lot, about his backstory with his father and his emotional life—and then people hate me.”
Eisenberg would go on to appear as Luthor for one last cameo appearance in 2017’s Justice League as a setup for the formation of the Legion of Doom. Though the actor expressed interest in continuing the role forever, new DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran decided to overhaul the DC Universe entirely with a new slate that begins with the upcoming Superman: Legacy. Upon the announcement of Hoult being cast as the new Luthor, Gunn teased that he and the actor would “create a Lex that will be different from anything you’ve seen before and will never forget.”
Directed by James Gunn, Superman: Legacy is scheduled for release in theaters on July 11, 2025.
