Despite some mild Daredevil-inspired backlash, when Warner Bros. announced that Ben Affleck was taking up the cowl as the company’s next big screen Batman, it seemed like an impossible win for the studio. Not only did they secure one of the most bankable stars on the planet — whose charismatic affectation delicately toed the same line between playboy and manically driven perfectionist that informs most interpretations of the Dark Knight himself — but they nailed one of the most under-utilized talents behind the camera in Hollywood.
Given just how much of a presence he’s become in front of the camera, it’s easy to forget the commanding influence he holds behind it. Along with Matt Damon, he splashed onto the film scene by penning the Oscar-winning script for Good Will Hunting. He narrowly missed out on winning a Best Director Oscar for Argo immediately before he was announced for the franchise
Warner Bros. was clearly telegraphing their plans for the DCEU with this one talent acquisition. With Ben Affleck, they didn’t just get a bankable face to put on every movie poster. They got both the director and screenwriter for their inevitable Batman solo movie.
But then things started to falter somewhat. Although the Batman side of Batman v Superman was better received than most of the rest of the movie — thanks in no large part to the headliner they signed on for Bruce Wayne — it still fell short of expectations: not just critically, but commercially as well. They might have snagged one of the biggest names on the planet to play one of the most iconic characters in his genre, but poor writing and even worse direction tanked movie-goers’ patience for the fledgling DCEU and ticket sales sharply declined by its second week in theaters.
But there was still hope for the franchise, at least the part of it that included Batman. Ben Affleck was still their ace in the hole, and he’d obviously do better in a project that he wrote and directed himself. All they had to do was get the man behind the camera and things would start to right themselves.
As it turned out, however, that was not meant to be either. Despite securing him with the clear intentions of putting him in charge of the next Batman movie, after Dawn of Justice (and Suicide Squad, and Man of Steel), Affleck clearly wanted no part of the series more than he was already contractually tied to it. Feigning his busy schedule keeping him from doing everything, he announced that he would stick just playing the role and penning the script.
The job of directing the film went to Matt Reeves. With the last two Planet of the Apes movies and Cloverfield under his belt he was certainly no directorial pushover, but neither was he nearly the same caliber of filmmaker as Affleck. But still, there was Affleck’s script to contend with, and I hoped that that would at least be enough to keep this from becoming a total train wreck.
As it turns out, it wasn’t. It was recently announced that the Batman script — in its entirety — was being dropped and rewritten. Although we don’t now what direction this new script will ultimately take — whether it will include the previously announced and heavily promoted Deathstroke or go with one of the Dark Knight’s more colorful antagonists — is currently unknown.
As a matter of fact, not much is known at all about this new version of the movie that he’s making. Reeves stated that he wanted to make a “Noir” version of Batman, although the way he said the word, I’m not entirely convinced he really understands what that means. At any rate, they have until 2019 to figure it out.
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