Drama to comedy, Facebook founder to pizza guy, Eisenberg delivers

Cheerfully? This is a comedy, after all.

“30 Minutes’’ which opens Friday, reunites Eisenberg with Ruben Fleischer, who directed him in “Zombieland’’ (2009), another proudly off-kilter comedy. The film also stars Aziz Ansari, as Nick’s best friend, and Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, as the dim-bulb duo who’ve encased him in the bomb so as to get him to rob a bank for them. They need the money because they want to open a massage parlor and also need to pay off a hit man (Michael Pena) and … well, you get the idea.

Eisenberg said that the leap (or plummet) from Zuckerberg to Nick was just happenstance. “I wasn’t conscious of doing something new,’’ he said. “I auditioned for ‘The Social Network’ a few times. I auditioned for this movie a few times. I just like to pursue things that seem to have a character who’d be interesting to play over a long period of time. In this movie, the character starts out as a lazy, bitter, selfish guy, and it takes this insane day and a ridiculous situation to get him to grow up a bit.’’

Even if he’d wanted to get as far away from Zuckerberg as possible, Eisenberg said, he didn’t know that that was in his power.

“I’m far less in control of my career than it may appear. I think all actors probably feel that way. Yet because they’re the face of the movie and in such a public position, it makes it look as though they’re far more in control of things than they actually are.’’

Even earning a best actor Oscar nomination, as Eisenberg did for “Social Network,’’ hasn’t really changed that, he said. “Well, I get sent things now earlier in the process. So if a movie is trying to get made, maybe they’ll send the script to me before they have the financing so that, if they get me attached, maybe they’ll have a better chance of getting it funded. But 99 percent of the movies that are funded are not good. So the quality doesn’t change. And you don’t want to do the really bad things in the first place. So I’m not working any more than I would have two years ago.’’