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We’re not sure if you all have heard, but the new Superman movie from James Gunn is pretty good, which is probably a relief for Warner Bros., as Superman is now the foundation upon which DC Studios is building their new DCU. And James Gunn isn’t shy about saying that many of the characters in Superman are going to pop up in future DCU projects – especially Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor.

“I think that Lex Luthor is important to Superman,” James Gunn told Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I think he is also important to the future of the DC Universe.”

It probably isn’t surprising that Lex Luthor, who is easily the most iconic of Superman’s villains, will feature heavily in future DCU movies, but James Gunn did admit that he won’t always be a merely intellectual adversary to the Man of Steel. When the host reminded Gunn that Lex Luthor has built himself a whole robot suit to help him go toe-to-toe with Superman, Gunn didn’t dismiss the idea of including that power suit from the comics. “We still got plenty of time, man,” James Gunn said with a smile. “We see the early prototypes of that suit.”

While there was never a version of the Superman script that had Lex Luthor being a physical adversary to Superman, James Gunn seems to be implying that the next time we see Nicholas Hoult’s Luthor might be a very different story. Which is good news for those of us desperate to see Lex Luthor’s mad scientist era play out on the big screen.

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