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Man of Steel and 300 director Zack Snyder has a new Netflix movie, Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver, hitting Netflix on Friday, April 19.
Despite the project’s (a two-part film, with the first being released in December) $160M+ price tag, Netflix hasn’t done much to promote Rebel Moon 2, likely due to the putrid response to the first movie.
Given the film’s relative lack of promotion, the usually vocal director Zack Snyder hasn’t been giving many interviews in the lead-up to the film’s release.
He did, however, speak to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he dropped the bombshell news that he spoke with Leonardo DiCaprio about playing Lex Luthor in the now-dead DCEU.
“Leonardo DiCaprio, I talked to about it. I think DiCaprio, he had a lot of great ideas actually just in the meeting,” Snyder told Happy Sad Confused host Joshua Horowitz.
“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. I think he was the one that mentioned to me this idea about Superman fighting the Justice League at some point, and I was like ‘That sounds cool.’”
In addition to DiCaprio, Snyder said that he also spoke to Adam Driver about the role. Snyder’s version of Luthor was introduced in 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which means Driver was already quite the star by then given his Star Wars role of Kylo Ren.
Despite DiCaprio famously telling Timothee Chalamet “no capes” (i.e., don’t play a superhero), this actually isn’t the first time he’s been attached to a villainous DC role as legend has long had it that Warner Bros. was eyeing the Academy Award winner to play Riddler in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy capper.
Ultimately, the role went to Jesse Eisenberg, who, despite being an immensely talented Oscar-nominated actor, got the performance completely wrong and created a character that many fans believe is the weakest part of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Ironically, Eisenberg’s final appearance as Luthor in the post-credit scene of Zack Snyder’s Justice League features a much more traditional interpretation of the character that many fans found themselves eager to see.
Lex Luthor will be returning to the big screen in 2025 when Nicholas Hoult portrays him in James Gunn’s Superman alongside fellow stars David Corenswet (Clark Kent) and Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane).