2012 Movie News Archives

February 20, 2012: Robert Downey Jr. Was Almost Lex Luthor

Robert Downey Jr In an interview with IndieWire.com, director McG reveals that Robert Downey Jr. was actually cast to play Lex Luthor in his never-made Superman movie.

    In the early aughts, McG was attached to "Flyby," a rebooting of the "Superman" series that, thanks to a boldly different take from screenwriter J.J. Abrams, would have made wholesale changes to the origins of Superman, his home planet Krypton, and his main nemesis Lex Luthor. McG ended up exiting the project when the studio was adamant about shooting in Australia. He blames his fear of flying for being "thrown off" that project, calling it his "rock-bottom" moment, which would eventually lead him to taking on his next film, the plane-crash drama "We Are Marshall," as a catharsis.

    McG says no final casting decisions had been made on the film, though he did mention one name that, we admit, we hadn't heard before. "We had Robert Downey Jr. locked up to be Lex Luthor, which I think would have been extraordinary," McG enthused. But his pick for the Big Blue Boyscout is actually much less of a surprise. "Ironically, we liked Henry Cavill a lot, but we hadn't cast him yet," he says of the actor currently wearing the tights in the upcoming "Man Of Steel." "J.J. wrote the script, and we got that to a really good place in the end," he says of the film, the first in a proposed trilogy. "But I'm to blame for [the film not happening]."

It's interesting to hear that Henry Cavill was also close to being McG's choice to play Superman all those years ago.

Source: IndieWire.com.



2012 Movie News

Listed below are all the Movie News items archived for 2012 organized into various categories:

“Man of Steel” Movie News:

“Justice League” Movie News: “Superman: Unbound” Animated Movie News: “Justice League: Doom” Animated Movie News: “Superman vs. The Elite” Animated Movie News: Christopher Reeve Movie News: Other Movie News:

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