See Alexander Skarsgard As Perfect Lex Luthor For Superman Legacy
Now that Superman and Lois Lane have officially been cast for James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy, fans are making guesses at who might play Superman’s most infamous nemesis, Lex Luthor. The Instagram account @horrific.heroics took a stab at some fan-casting by making some mock-ups of what Alexander Skarsgard, Bill Skarsgard, and Nicholas Hoult would look like as the shiny-domed baddie.
While all of these actors would no doubt crush the role, Alexander Skarsgard seems especially poised to take on Supes.
Alexander Skarsgard recently proved that he’s more than capable of playing a smarmy, incomprehensibly wealthy villain when he played the tech billionaire Lukas Matsson in the last two seasons of Succession.
Skarsgard even earned some Emmy nominations for his efforts and might just take one home at the 2023 Emmys. While Luthor would undoubtedly be a different kind of bad than Matsson, it still seems like a role that Skarsgard could easily slide into.
Alexander Skarsgard proved he’s capable of playing a smarmy, incomprehensibly wealthy villain when he played the tech billionaire Lukas Matsson in the last two seasons of Succession
If Alexander Skarsgard would get the role of Lex Luthor in Superman: Legacy, it would certainly be his biggest blockbuster to date. His would-be 2016 blockbuster, The Legend of Tarzan, failed to make waves financially or critically, so it wasn’t quite the launching point to superstardom it could have been.
Skarsgard would end up getting a ton of critical acclaim for his grueling efforts in Robert Eggers’ 2022 film The Northman, but you wouldn’t necessarily classify that film as a blockbuster.
Not only is Superman: Legacy going to be a huge movie simply because it features one of the world’s most famous superheroes, but it’s also the first film in James Gunn‘s new DCU.
There is a lot riding on the film, and casting a talent like Alexander Skarsgard in such a big villain role would be a good move to drum up hype for the future of the franchise. After all, Gunn has said that whoever is cast in the films will play the same role across all mediums, meaning TV and video game appearances as well.
James Gunn has said that whoever is cast in the films will play the same role across all mediums, meaning TV and video game appearances as well.
Lex Luthor is undoubtedly one of the biggest villain roles in DC, so it’ll be important to knock the casting out of the park and pick someone who can bring the intellect and menace to the role that Luthor is known for. Alexander Skarsgard would be a great pick.
It also works from a lore standpoint because Lex is usually older than Superman, and Skarsgard’s 42 years puts him at a decent age gap from David Corenswet’s 30 years.
It’s likely that James Gunn will keep his cards close to the vest as to who the villain in Superman: Legacy will be, so even if Alexander Skarsgard got the role, we probably wouldn’t know for a while.
Gunn is also known for picking more offbeat villains for his comic book movies, so it’s entirely possible that we won’t even see the DCU’s version of Lex Luthor in the first film (though you have to imagine he would pop up eventually). For now, we’ll just have to wait and see until we learn more about Superman: Legacy, which is set to hit theaters on July 11, 2025.
