Michael Shannon lit the internet on fire when he told Vulture earlier this month that he had trouble using a porta-potty on the set of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice because he had “wax flippers” on his fingers. This seemingly confirmed the long-standing rumor that Zod’s corpse — as seen in the Comic-Con trailer — would be engineered to become Doomsday in the film, but now Shannon is claiming that he fabricated the whole story.
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“Somebody was asking me about this in New York and I made up some ridiculous bulls**t answer about how my character Zod has flippers, and this went viral on the Internet or something and people have been asking me about that,” Shannon told The Daily Beast while he was promoting 99 Homes. “That is so obviously a complete bulls**t story, right? But people took it seriously.”
The Daily Beast pointed out to Shannon that his face appears in the latest Batman v Superman trailer (General Zod being carted off in a body bag), but his appearance in it even surprised him. “I wasn’t there,” he said. “It’s a really awkward situationโI’m in the trailer for a movie that I didn’t work on.”
A movie he didn’t work on? Okay. Then he says he did work on the film, but only voice-over work. Huh?! “I went over and did some voice-over stuff because it’s like that ghost thing,” he said. “But I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that. I get very nervous.”
By “ghost thing” Shannon is referring to A.I.-like entity that Jor-El (Russell Crowe) appeared as in Man of Steel. “The thing about the whole Krypton universe, apparently, is that even when you destroy them, there are ghosts,” Shannon explained. “The first [film], Jor-El is there even though he’s been dead for lord knows how long.”
In Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, fearing the actions of a god-like Super Hero left unchecked, Gotham City’s own formidable, forceful vigilante takes on Metropolis’s most revered, modern-day savior, while the world wrestles with what sort of hero it really needs. And with Batman and Superman at war with one another, a new threat quickly arises, putting mankind in greater danger than it’s ever known before.
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice opens March 25, 2016.