In interviews leading up to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, we had heard that Zack Snyder offered Jesse Eisenberg a different role before Lex Luthor. We didn’t know what that role was, however, until now! Zack Snyder revealed all to Entertainment Weekly. Minor spoilers follow.
The role that Snyder originally offered to Eisenberg was Jimmy Olsen. Did you know he was in the movie? He was the photographer in the very beginning that was in Africa with Lois Lane. He didn’t have a huge role, because he gets shot in the head quickly after we first see him. In the extended version of the movie, which will be coming to Blu-ray this summer, Olsen introduces his full name to Lois Lane. That doesn’t happen in the theatrical cut. We just know him as a photographer.
“I thought, if it were Jesse Eisenberg and he got out and he goes, ‘I’m Jimmy Olsen,’ you’d be like, oh my God, we’re gonna have Jimmy Olsen in the whole movie, right?’” Snyder says. “And then if he got shot, you’d just be like, ‘What!? You can’t do that.’”
Snyder and his wife, producer Deborah Synder, met with Eisenberg to pitch the idea of a sudden-death cameo. “I said, ‘I want to do this misdirect and you’d be great. You’d be a great Jimmy Olsen,’” the director says. “And he’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ and he was being very Jesse in the meeting. Introverted but constantly going, ‘Okay, I see, uh-huh. So it’s sort of a pop-culture redirect, you’re gonna do, because of the certain status of an actor…”
As Eisenberg thought out loud in rapid-fire bursts, Snyder watched the nervy, jangled young actor and started thinking of withdrawing the Jimmy Olsen offer. And after the 32-year-old actor left the meeting, Snyder turned to his wife: “I was like, ‘Wow, that guy is crazy… Debbie, what about Jesse as Lex?”
Do you like Snyder’s idea of a shocking death cameo? Are you happy they decided to offer Eisenberg the role of Lex Luthor instead? Let me know what you think of this idea in the comments below.
SOURCE: Entertainment Weekly
