One of the more worrying things about Joker earning over a billion dollars at the box office, winning widespread acclaim and becoming an awards season darling is that it could lead to a slew of unnecessary origin stories for characters who don’t really need them, because history has shown ten times over than Hollywood loves nothing more than jumping on a bandwagon and trying to replicate the formula for success down to a tee.
Veteran DC producer Michael Uslan, who’s been involved in a ton of live-action and animated projects for the company dating back decades, even admitted that any number of comic book favorites could be getting the dark and gritty standalone treatment, naming Mr. Freeze as his personally preferred candidate.
It hasn’t happened as of yet, but a new rumor claims that Lex Luthor is going to be getting a Joker-style reinvention. That’s the entirety of the summation, though, so it’s vague at best. The last time we saw Lex Luthor on the big screen we had Jesse Eisenberg splitting opinion right down the middle with his eccentric mannerisms and jar of piss, but he was set to play a massive and world-saving role in Zack Snyder’s Justice League 3.
The rumor does offer than Eisenberg more than likely isn’t going to be returning, even if the 37 year-old could conceivably get away with playing a character at least ten, if not fifteen years younger than he actually is. Of course, this is nowhere near close to being confirmed or corroborated and the head of LexCorp hardly comes burdened with leading man potential, but it does beg the question: would anybody even be interested in a Lex Luthor solo outing?