If there’s one comic book movie that wasn’t set to be directed by Zack Snyder to be designated as “the one that got away,” then Ben Affleck’s take on The Batman would be very near – or at the very top – of the list.
The two-time Academy Award winner was on course to star, direct, co-write, and executive produce a standalone blockbuster for the DCEU’s Dark Knight, only for things to come apart at the seams when he temporarily retired from the role, just to come back right in the midst of Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson developing their own take on the project.
The campaigns to will it into existence are as constant as they are futile, but those fires are about to be stoked yet again after Jay Olivia dished some brand new details in an interview with Inverse.
“I can’t really say too much other than it was fucking awesome. It was the best. It was amazing. From my understanding, there were a couple of drafts of it. When I was brought on, I don’t know whether it was the second draft or something, but it was what Geoff Johns and Ben had shown me.
I’ve worked on a lot of Batman things and what was really cool about it was, it was tying together a lot of really cool Batman storylines that had never been really explored. Ben’s story was gonna cover something that had never really been covered in comics but was building off of storylines in the Batman mythos over the last 80 years and approaching it from a new kind of perspective.
It was very clever and there were a lot of things about it that I really loved that I wish that had come to fruition. It was a really great project in the beginning. Ben had to step away for personal reasons, and I totally understood, but the time that I spent with Ben working on the project was fantastic. Maybe someday I can spill the beans. but I still can’t talk about it.”
Sadly, The Batman directed by Ben Affleck will never happen now that he’s out as the Caped Crusader yet again, but its near-mythic status has already been long since secured.