One of the biggest surprises for the upcoming Batman vs. Superman film, beyond this week’s reveal of the new Batsuit and Batmobile, was the casting of The Social Network and Zombieland star Jesse Eisenberg as Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor. Since the announcement of his casting in January, there’s been little said about Eisenberg’s involvement in the film, but in an interview with IGN he did open up about the role, in particular about 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 if he would be going bald for the role, the question on most people’s minds, Eisenberg unfortunately was unable to answer, saying: “I’m not allowed to say anything, because of their privacy.”
The conversation shifted to whether Eisenberg chose the role because of its attachment to a giant franchise, which he says is more of an added bonus to getting to play the character.
“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.”
Opening in theaters on May 6, 2016, the anticipated film also stars Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Callan Mulvey, Tao Okamoto and Ray Fisher.
(Photo Credit: WENN.com)
