Zack Snyder met with Leonardo DiCaprio about Lex Luthor role, says actor gave him idea for Justice League

Breaking news from The Daily Planet: Leonardo DiCaprio could have played Superman's archnemesis Lex Luthor.

Filmmaker Zack Snyder revealed the tidbit in the latest episode of Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast, saying he met with the Killers of the Flower Moon star to discuss the role for his 2016 superhero flick, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a gig that ultimately went to Jesse Eisenberg.

"I talked to him about it," Snyder said, adding that DiCaprio "had a lot of great ideas, actually, just in the meeting."

He continued, "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."

If Snyder's memory serves him well, DiCaprio also suggested a sequence that wound up making the final cut of Justice League. "I think he was the one that mentioned to me this idea about Superman fighting the Justice League at some point," Snyder recalled.

A follow-up to 2013's Man of Steel, the movie Dawn of Justice centered on the clash between Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) puppeteered by Eisenberg's conniving villain.

In his Happy Sad Confused interview, Snyder also confirmed rumors that he had spoken to Adam Driver about the possibility of playing Lex Luthor, though he did not offer any details about the call.

DiCaprio has yet to star in any superhero movies, but his name has been floated plenty within the genre. Writer and filmmaker David S. Goyer, who worked with Christopher Nolan on The Dark Knight trilogy, revealed on an earlier episode of the podcast that Warner Bros. asked him to put Riddler in The Dark Knight Rises and to cast DiCaprio in the role.

“After The Dark Knight, the head of Warner Bros. at the premiere said, ‘You got to do the Riddler. Leo as the Riddler. You got to tell Chris, Leo as the Riddler.’ And that’s not the way we work," Goyer told Horowitz in 2023, explaining that he and Nolan did not pick out villains until after Batman's story was fully fleshed out.

Watch Snyder's new interview above.

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