Leonardo DiCaprio Had 'a Lot of Great Ideas' When He Met with Zack Snyder About Playing Lex Luthor in “Batman v Superman”

Jesse Eisenberg ultimately played the supervillain in 2016's 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice'

Leonardo DiCaprio has never strayed into making comic book movies — but that does not mean he has never thought about it.

Zack Snyder, the filmmaker best known for his work with the DC Extended Universe and the Justice League movies, said on the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he spoke with both Adam Driver and DiCaprio, 49, about playing supervillain Lex Luthor in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

"I think I did talk to Adam on the phone, yeah," Snyder, 58, recalled, after host Josh Horowitz asked about rumored casting choices for that role. "Leonardo DiCaprio, I talked to him about it."

Snyder, who ultimately cast Jesse Eisenberg in the film opposite Henry Cavill's Superman and Ben Affleck's Batman, said DiCaprio "had a lot of great ideas, actually, just in the meeting."

"I think, in the end, he was like, 'Eh, I don't know.' But he was really smart about the material and really smart about the character," the filmmaker recalled. "In a lot of ways, I think he was the one that mentioned to me this idea about Superman fighting the Justice League at some point."

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Dawn of Justice marked the second film that Snyder directed within DC's former Extended Universe, which the filmmaker started with 2013's Man of Steel. The sequel, Dawn of Justice, featured Luthor pitting Batman and Superman against each other, ultimately leading to Superman's death and the formation of the Justice League, which set up the 2017 movie of the same name.

That idea Snyder originally attributed to DiCaprio comes to fruition in both Justice League and 2021's recut Zack Snyder's Justic League, which features one sequence in which Cavill's Superman fights his other superhero allies.

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Snyder's recollection of his meeting with DiCaprio, whom he described as a comic book fan, is not the first time the Oscar winner's name has been attached to past DC superhero blockbusters. David S. Goyer, the writer who worked with Christopher Nolan on the filmmaker's own Batman trilogy, told Happy Sad Confused in September 2023 that Warner Bros. executives wanted DiCaprio to play Batman's foe, the Riddler, following the success of 2008's The Dark Knight.

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“I remember after The Dark Knight, the head of Warner Bros. at the premiere said, ‘You got to do the Riddler. Leo as the Riddler,' saying to me, 'You got to tell Chris, Leo as the Riddler,' " Goyer recalled.

DiCaprio most recently appeared on the big screen in 2023's Killers of the Flower Moon. Variety recently reported that the actor is planning to team up with Martin Scorsese once again to play Frank Sinatra in a biopic.

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