The Batman

With Ben Affleck no longer directing the solo Batman movie (guess he finally watched Live by Night, huh?), the search is on for a new director to take his place. Amid various reports regarding Affleck’s exit from the director’s chair was an interesting tidbit of news you might have missed: The screenplay for The Batman, penned by Affleck with DC’s own Geoff Johns, received a rewrite from Chris Terrio.

A story, told in headlines: Here’s us on December 18, reporting on Ben Affleck’s voicing of slight misgivings about his tentative gig as the director of the new Batman solo film:

We all know that Ben Affleck’s performance as Batman was one of the few things both critics and fans of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice could completely agree on. From his shallow playboy persona as Bruce Wayne to his thinly veiled rage as the Dark Knight, Affleck’s take on the character got everyone very excited to see what the actor-writer-director could do with a free hand for his standalone The Batman movie. Unfortunately, things have slowed considerably since, with rumors of mediocre scripts and a shifting release date taking some of the buzz off the upcoming release.

There seems to be a bit of conflicting information regarding Ben Affleck’s standalone Batman movie: Last week, Zack Snyder set his next directing project as WB pushed back the release of Justice League 2, reportedly to make room for the Batman movie. Earlier this week, Affleck said he’s taking his time with the project and making sure the script, which he’s co-writing with Geoff Johns, is right before heading into production. But now, Affleck has confirmed that his Batman film will shoot next spring, while WB president Greg Silverman says it’s on track for a 2018 release.

One of the biggest problems (and one that we’ve covered quite a bit) with Warner Bros’ DCEU is the way the studio is reverse-engineering its Justice League franchise. Instead of establishing their characters in individual films and slowly building toward a big crossover, they’ve done the reverse. And by building their productions around meeting a release date deadline, they wind up with films that are kind of a mess. If Ben Affleck’s approach to his Batman standalone film (and the recent decision to delay Justice League 2) is any indication, then maybe — just maybe — WB is learning from their mistakes.

With all the heroes joining Batman and Wonder Woman (and Superman) in Justice League, plus almost all of them getting their own solo movies, it’s almost impossible to find room for them all. Warner Bros. recently did a bit of reshuffling with their slate of films, and pushed back the release of Justice League: Part 2, which until now had had a mid-2019 spot, to make room for Ben Affleck’s Batman movie. And now that Snyder has some free time on his hands, he’s turning his attention to Afghanistan war thriller The Last Photograph.

For as much as Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies varied wildly in tone and aesthetics, one thing both franchises got right was the character of Catwoman. Michelle Pfeiffer played Selina Kyle in Batman Returns as a demented femme fatale, the true star of Burton’s sequel, while Anne Hathaway’s high-tech criminal was the perfect updating of the character for Nolan’s urban Batnoir. One unhinged and unbroken, the other sleek and urbane, the perfect summary of two separate directorial styles.

Excited about more Batfleck in The Batman? No one is more pumped for it than Ben Affleck himself, probably, but Joe Manganiello’s enthusiasm comes pretty close. While appearing on a podcast this week, he said all the right things about the standalone Batman movie that have us feeling hopeful that maybe the DC cinematic universe’s darkest days could be behind it.

Jeremy Irons isn’t one of those actors that’s going to say what you want to hear…unless you didn’t particularly like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and what you want to hear is that he agrees with you. Zack Snyder’s ambitious superhero project failed to impress critics and inspired a wave of negative reviews — all of which Jeremy Irons believes the film rightfully deserved. And he was in it, so he should know.

When Warner Bros. announced their upcoming superhero schedule last year, one title notably missing was a solo Batman movie. Sure, Batman was going to be a big part of both Batman vs. Superman and the two Justice League movies, but would Batfleck be getting his own trilogy, a la The Dark Knight? It turns out, yes, yes he will. Latino Review is reporting that Ben Affleck will both star in and direct the spinoff, titled The Batman, which is set for November 2018.