Zack Snyder cast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, putting a new, Mark Zuckerberg-inspired spin on the villain which divided opinions.
Later imprisoned in Arkham Asylum for his role in creating Doomsday, Lex's head was shaved and he later returned in both versions of Justice League. In one, he suggested to Deathstroke that they create a team of their own (likely the Injustice League). In the other, he revealed Batman's identity to Slade Wilson as a means of setting the stage for Ben Affleck's take on The Batman.
Now, the DCEU is being rebooted by DC Studios as the DCU and X-Men actor Nicholas Hoult will take over the role of Lex in James Gunn's Superman: Legacy.
Variety recently caught up with Eisenberg and asked if he has any advice for his successor. He responded with, "Don’t watch me!" The actor then elaborated on those comments by saying he thinks Hoult should do his own thing with the villain.
"Whenever you play a role you feel connected to it," he added. "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."
We spoke with Eisenberg in 2021 and asked him if he'd ever return to the role.
"[Laughs] I’m probably the last person to know the answer to that question because I don’t know how they make those decisions. You know, my background is in theatre where you do a play 200 times and you feel like you’re just getting the hang of it by the last performance. I would love to play any character again. After a movie ends, the actors usually turn to each other and say, ‘Oh, now I finally know what I’m doing and I understand what my purpose [was].' Actors, in my experience, do like playing roles again but that particular one is just not up to me. I’m sure I could do a one-man show somewhere but no one would, you know…"
We later put it to the actor that it seemed like the DCEU once had big plans in place for his iteration of the villain. To that, he replied, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. Also, if there were [plans], I didn’t know about them. Otherwise, I’d have some great material, but I didn’t know about it!"
Eisenberg ever returning to the superhero genre seems unlikely, particularly as he now seems to have shifted focus to smaller projects and his ambitions to direct. He left a lasting impact as Lex, anyway, and it will be interesting to see how Hoult's approach differs when Superman: Legacy is released next year.