Before Warner Bros. pulled the rug out from beneath Zack Snyder, he'd assembled an impressive cast for 2017's Justice League. One of the most exciting additions was Spider-Man star J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Jim Gordon, a character we'd hoped to also see take centre stage in Ben Affleck's The Batman.
Around that time, a photo of Simmons in the gym looking jacked went viral. Many assumed he was getting ripped for Snyder (who also spends a fair bit of time in the gym), but the actor has finally addressed his impressive physique while doing the rounds to discuss Invincible season 2.
"Here's the thing about getting jacked for Justice League," Simmons recalled. "I had done a movie called, 'I'm Not Here,' coincidentally, written and directed by my wife. I played a character who was emaciated, think of The Machinist, and I had lost a ton of weight, and without being unhealthy I'd lost 35 pounds."
"So when I went back into the gym with my pal, Aaron Williamson, and just started pounding the protein and going crazy at good old Gold's Gym in Laurel Canyon in the valley. He snapped a few pictures when I was really pumped up and at my strongest during that period, asked if I would be okay if he posted it on Instagram. I didn't know what Instagram was, I didn't know anything. This was a few years ago. And I was like, yeah, sure, whatever."
The actor continued, "And then three, four months later, all of a sudden, somebody's whatever, it reposting it and I get texts from 30 friends in the same day, 'What the hell? Whoa, man, that picture, blah, blah, blah.' And the press got ahold of it and said, because I was about to do Zack Snyder's Justice League, the assumption was, 'Oh, well, he's getting jacked so he can be in a DC comic.'"
"But if you think about it, Commissioner Gordon wears a trench coat the whole movie," Simmons added. "So it really doesn't matter what his biceps look like, it was just coincidental timing with me trying to reclaim my distant athletic youth and trying to stay fit and give my wife some eye candy."
Simmons made it into Joss Whedon's version of Justice League and only had a few extra seconds when Zack Snyder's Justice League finally followed four years later.
While Affleck decided to move on from The Batman, the Spider-Man: No Way Home actor did shoot scenes for Batgirl (where he'd have played the father of Leslie Grace's Barbara Gordon and shared the screens with Michael Keaton's Dark Knight). Unfortunately, that was scrapped by Warner Bros. Discovery.