Jesse Eisenberg has been chatting about being offered the Lex Luthor role in Batman V Superman, and the tight security over the script.
It’s well known now that there are two versions of the film Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, from director Zack Snyder. The theatrical cut – that saw Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill’s Superman – face off against each other (eventually) came in at two and a half hours. And a further extended version that was added for the home release, that took the running time to three hours.
Thus, you can imagine that the actual screenplay for the film was not on the short side.
Jesse Eisenberg, who played Lex Luthor in the movie, has been chatting about taking the role on. And he revealed that he was given just an hour and a half with the screenplay before it was deleted from his computer. Chris Terrio penned the script, and Eisenberg described it as “one of the most dense scripts I’ve read intellectually”, which in turn meant it took long to read.
“There were references to things I’d never heard of, I was shocked. Because I’d never seen a superhero movie, because I live in a bubble or whatever, and so I thought it was just going to be people flying around for a hundred pages”, he told Konbini.
As such, when his 90 minutes was up, he was far from completing the script, and had to ask for a formal extension. And he, of course, ultimately signed up for the role of Luthor. That said, he’d ultimately only get a chance to play the role for one film and one brief cameo, as Snyder’s take on the key DC properties petered out.
The interview with Eisenberg can be found here.
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