Lex Luthor Confirmed For Opening Scene Of Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was a movie that split opinion down the middle at virtually every turn, and one of the biggest talking points in the aftermath was Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor. The actor made some interesting choices when it came to the character, essentially reinventing the middle-aged businessman as a young entrepreneur that reminded people more than a little of his Academy Award nominated turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

And as we’ve seen in the years since the movie’s release, Eisenberg’s performance might have actually been more prescient than any of us could have imagined. Zuckerberg did wind up in front of Congress eventually much like Lex in Batman v Superman, although the DCEU’s bald headed bad guy sent a jar of pee to his hearing instead of actually showing up in person, while Elon Musk is just one underground lair away from being a billionaire comic book supervillain.

Eisenberg has admitted on more than one occasion that he’d be open to reprising the role in the future, and while there’s no word yet on if he was part of the Justice League reshoots, Zack Snyder has confirmed that the head of LexCorp does factor into his new version of the movie in the very first scene, having previously been reduced to a post-credits cameo that went nowhere.

“This is the beginning of the movie. You see Superman. We go through, this is all the lightning, the kind of orange lightning that comes off of Doomsday. There was also some sort of gravity issue, like these rocks were floating and all sorts of things were happening. Then we see the, as we drive in. That’s Superman there as we drive in the, he’s pulling the bone fragment out of Superman’s chest and he cries out. Now, if you notice also in BvS there’s a very audible cry. You can hear it’s Superman’s cry now. The cry goes across, this is Heroes Park, this is the Containment Centre where Lex is. And then you see Lex communing with Steppenwolf.”

We’ll just have to wait and find out whether it’s all-new Justice League footage or additional scenes plucked from the mountain of material that was left on the cutting room floor when Joss Whedon took over, but Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor could find himself in the same boat as Jared Leto’s Joker as someone looking for a second chance to get the fans firmly on board with their polarizing take on an iconic villain.