McG Claims Robert Downey Jr. Was His Lex in 'FlyBy'

February 20, 2012: Robert Downey Jr. Was Almost Lex Luthor

In an interview with IndieWire.com, director McG reveals that Robert Downey Jr. was actually cast to play Lex Luthor in his never-made Superman movie.

In the early aughts, McG was attached to "Flyby," a rebooting of the "Superman" series that, thanks to a boldly different take from screenwriter J.J. Abrams, would have made wholesale changes to the origins of Superman, his home planet Krypton, and his main nemesis Lex Luthor. McG ended up exiting the project when the studio was adamant about shooting in Australia. He blames his fear of flying for being "thrown off" that project, calling it his "rock-bottom" moment, which would eventually lead him to taking on his next film, the plane-crash drama "We Are Marshall," as a catharsis.

McG says no final casting decisions had been made on the film, though he did mention one name that, we admit, we hadn't heard before. "We had Robert Downey Jr. locked up to be Lex Luthor, which I think would have been extraordinary," McG enthused. But his pick for the Big Blue Boyscout is actually much less of a surprise. "Ironically, we liked Henry Cavill a lot, but we hadn't cast him yet," he says of the actor currently wearing the tights in the upcoming "Man Of Steel." "J.J. wrote the script, and we got that to a really good place in the end," he says of the film, the first in a proposed trilogy. "But I'm to blame for [the film not happening]."

thecolorsblend wrote:In subsequent interviews and rants and whatnot, Abrams has said the problems with the script would've been fixed in the end. All those little "innovations" he came up with would've been done away with. What that says about how McG might've designed the costume is up for debate, of course, but more than once I've wondered, assuming he was telling the truth, how Abrams might've handled the material.

Mind you, the Apologists (before there ever officially was such a thing) opposed this movie from the get-go. And NOT because of anything Abrams did either. Don't believe the revisionist history on that one. They simply didn't want a "music video director" handling Superman.

If that sounds familiar, it's because they said the same thing about Zack Snyder.

The more things change...

webhead2006 wrote:Its been so long since I seen those scripts. I forgotten what was all the bad/good elements from them.