Nicholas Hoult Officially Cast As The DCU’s Lex Luthor
Hoult was a longtime frontrunner, being named such even as picks for Supes and Lois were being narrowed
Another cast member for Superman: Legacy has officially been called. Nicholas Hoult has been reportedly cast as Superman’s archnemesis Lex Luthor, the bald-headed titan behind LexCorp with an “abiding fixation” on bringing down the big blue Boy Scout.
The British actor was reportedly the only actor being aggressively considered for the role. Warner Bros. still wanted to go through the casting process for an actor to play Luthor anyway. He comes as an established movie star compared to the fresher faces to film cast for Clark Kent/Superman, David Corenswet, and Lois Lane, Rachel Brosnahan. The studio has finally managed to stick Hoult in an intended long-term franchise having been fond of him ever since he played Nux in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. He was nearly cast in the role of Bruce Wayne and Batman in The Batman, which went to Robert Pattinson, and soon stars in their film Juror No. 2 directed by Clint Eastwood. Recently seen in The Menu with Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes and Renfield with Nicolas Cage, the 33-year-old actor has extensive comic book movie experience, having played the X-Men’s Hank McCoy, aka Beast, in the First Class to Dark Phoenix portion of the film series. He will also be voicing Jon Arbuckle in The Garfield Movie and appear in Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu.
DC Studios co-head and Superman: Legacy writer and director James Gunn has in addition to Corenswet and Brosnahan already cast Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner Green Lantern, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho aka Rex Mason, and, as announced just a few days ago, María Gabriela De Faría as Angela Spica, The Engineer. Considering Spica’s background, collaboration between her and Luthor may very well work organically. The film is currently set to be released on July 11, 2025, a date reinforced even among all the delays from the prolonged period the talent couldn’t get their contracts, and will kick off the new DC Universe, originally announced in January.