
Her star Joaquin Phoenix is reportedly director Zach Snyder’s first choice to play the legendary villain Lex Luthor in his upcoming Batman vs. Superman epic. The movie’s casting is still in the early stages, so Phoenix’s showdown with Batfleck is up in the air at this point. And as Variety notes, Phoenix has recently “steered clear of big-budget pics in the past few years” in favor of smaller indies, so there’s no guarantee he’d accept if it was formally offered. But, if he did take the role, it wouldn’t the first time he played a villain in a big-budget blockbuster: He received a Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor back in 2000 as a psychotic Roman emperor in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator …