Joaquin Phoenix Being Eyed for 'Batman/Superman' Villain

If Warner Bros. can land this one...

Word comes today that three time Academy Award nominee, Joaquin Phoenix (who may just well get his 4th for Spike Jonze's Her) is being eyed to play the main villain - believed to be Lex Luthor - in the still untitled Batman/Superman film.

The studio apparently wants a slam dunk for the role and you really can't get any more brilliant than an actor like Joaquin Phoenix.  Yeah, the dude might be a bit weird but he's one of the best actors working today...period.

There's no word on if Phoenix would even accept the role as he's avoided doing big budget tentpoles in favor of indie flicks that past several years, but if there's one film (and role) to make an exception for, this may very well be it.

Also worth noting about this project in today's news, Argo screenwriter Chris Terrio (which he won an Oscar for), is being brought in to do rewrites/polishes on the script, originally written by David Goyer.

I'm not surprised about this for two reasons, 1) David Goyer needs a more talented screenwriter to flesh out the strong points of his scripts and diminish the weak ones - a la Christopher/Jonathan Nolan with The Dark Knight Trilogy - because the guy's not a complete screenwriter, and 2)  Ben Affleck has A LOT of input on not only this project but the future of Batman on film so it should be expected he'd bring in talented people he's worked with before.

Source:  Variety