Nicolas Hoult Teases New Lex Luthor in Man of Tomorrow

Lex Luthor has never looked like this.

Nicolas Hoult, back in the saddle as DC’s most notorious schemer, hints that James Gunn has taken a scalpel to the villain’s playbook and rewritten a few of the rules. Hoult told Entertainment Tonight that after introducing these characters in Superman, the creative team finally has room to push them into unexpected territory—shades and angles we didn’t see before. The result? A Lex who feels less like a one-note nemesis and more like a living, breathing variable in a much larger equation.

Hoult’s excitement is infectious. He says the new script lets him roam into spaces the first film couldn’t reach. "James Gunn has written an incredible story—playing with who these people are and how they collide," Hoult explained, noting that the dynamic among the cast shifts in ways that will surprise audiences. Short sentence. Big promise.

What makes this iteration especially fascinating is the hinted partnership between Lex and Clark Kent. Gunn has previously indicated that Man of Tomorrow leans heavily on the relationship between those two men. They’ll face a greater threat together, and that uneasy alliance promises to reframe both characters. Imagine negotiation instead of simple antagonism. Tension that isn’t always about punches but about decisions, leverage and moral compromise.

Then there’s the suit. Early images revealed Lex in his iconic armored outfit—a visual cue that he’s moving out from behind the curtain and onto the battlefield. That armor transforms him from an off-screen manipulator into an active force on camera, recalibrating how we perceive danger in the film. How long this uneasy truce with Superman lasts, and what it does to their fraught history, remains one of the story’s most tempting questions.

Man of Tomorrow returns as a direct follow-up to Superman, with James Gunn writing and directing. David Corenswet reprises Clark Kent, Nicolas Hoult is back as Lex Luthor, and Lars Eidinger joins the cast as Brainiac. The film is set to arrive July 9, 2027—plenty of time for theories, hot takes and rumor mills to spin.

Who will you root for when the line between ally and adversary starts to blur?