200707120254Word that Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey will appear as Lex Luthor in the Superman sequel:

Kevin Spacey will return as Lex Luthor in “Superman: Man of Steel” and appear in “Telstar,” Nick Moran’s film version of Moran and James Hicks’ 2005 darkly comic West End play about flamboyant ’60s record mogul Joe Meek.

“Superman” director Bryan Singer met with Spacey in New York while the latter was appearing on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s recently wrapped “Moon for the Misbegotten.” Singer was about to pitch his “Man of Steel” sequel to Warner Bros.; “Superman Returns” scripter Michael Dougherty is now writing the screenplay.


Somehow even reporting this story fills us with a great chasm of indifference.

1 COMMENT

  1. The problem with the Spacey version of Luthor is that he was already 20 years out of date when the movie was released. The campy Luthor had long since been replaced by the much more interesting super capitalist Luthor in both the comics and the animated TV series. Imagine if Superman had returned to Earth and found that Luthor was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, instead of a cheap crook trying to wrangle crooked real estate deals? The campy version of Luthor was perhaps the biggest weakness in Superman Returns. Repeating a mistake is not a good start.

  2. Do we need another Lex Luthor vs. Superman movie? Can’t some other comic villain be used? (No Richard Pryor or Robert Vaughn either!) I’d like to see just a little more originality from Bryan Singer. Superman Returns was just too derivative, IMO. Even a giant spider would be refreshing, if it wasn’t just a tool of Lex Luthor. How about Braniac or Mongul or Toyman or Metallo or Bizarro or Parasite or anybody else? Just a thought.

  3. Am I the only one who thought Kevin Spacey’s Luthor was the BEST thing about “Superman Returns”? I’ve been rewatching it periodically as HBO reruns it over and over. I thought Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth were fine, if not inspiring; I thought the airplane sequence was phenomenal, and I thought Kevin Spacey stole the show every time he was on screen. And sorry, super-fans, but I just don’t think Superman has a very strong rogue’s gallery. Brainiac as villain could carry a movie, and maybe Bizarro could (but probably not alone). I really don’t see Toyman or the Prankster supplying the necessary villain-quotient for a film.

    Re: “reduced expectations” as an asset. Maybe. I know I liked Fantastic Four 2 better than 1, because I was expecting crap the second time and that’s what I got. I don’t think X-Men 2 was a better film because of reduced expectations, though. I think it was a better film because Singer was able to get all the set-up and exposition and world-building out of the way in the first film.