The teaser trailer for James Gunn’s “Superman” brought with it the first footage of Nicholas Hoult as the villainous Lex Luthor, a role Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg knows well having played the infamous DC comics bad guy in Zack Snyder’s 2016 tentpole “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” In a recent interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast (via The Playlist), the actor opened up about the downside of his short-lived tenure as Lex Luthor.

“I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received,” Eisenberg said. “I’ve never said this before and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way, because I was poorly received in something so public.”

“I’ve been in poorly received things that just don’t see the light of day, and for the most part, no one knows,” he added. “But this was so public, and I don’t read notices or reviews or movie press or anything, so I was unaware of how poorly it was received.”

While “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” grossed a mighty $874 million at the worldwide box office, it was ripped to shreds by film critics and not especially loved by comic book movie fans either. The film’s negative public reception was the beginning of the end for Zack Snyder’s DC Universe, which flatlined in 2017 with the flop that was “Justice League.”