If he hasn’t already made it abundantly clear, Ben Affleck is mincing no words about his unhappiness with the “Justice League” experience and his desire to step away from superhero and franchise films for a long time. And in a new interview with EW, where he’s discussing things with his pal, Matt Damon, Affleck continues to explain why he doesn’t think he’ll return to that sort of big-budget, franchise filmmaking in the future.
Over the past few months, Ben Affleck has been promoting the hell out of his recent films, “The Tender Bar” and “The Last Duel,” films he is hoping will land some nominations come awards time. While doing that, he’s been discussing what is clearly a shift away from superhero and franchise films and more towards surprising, prestige fare. And though he does have one more turn as Batman in the upcoming “Flash” film, Affleck is definitely using that as a swansong performance considering the hell he went through while working on “Justice League.”
Remember, “Justice League” was not only a rough experience, filmmaking-wise, as the director switch-up brought in Joss Whedon to do reshoots (and judging by a lot of the folks involved, that situation was pretty terrible), but it was also happening at a time when Affleck was going through a lot of personal issues. And in talking to Damon, Affleck admits that his friend was a big reason why he decided to change up his acting goals and step away from the superhero game.
“I had a really nadir experience around ‘Justice League’ for a lot of different reasons. Not blaming anybody, there’s a lot of things that happened,” Affleck explained. “But really what it was is that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like being there. I didn’t think it was interesting. And then some really shitty things, awful things happened. But, that’s when I was like, I’m not going to do that anymore.”
He continued, “In fact, I talked to you about it and you were a principal influence on that decision. I want to do the things that would bring me joy. Then we went and did ‘Last Duel’ and I had fun every day on this movie. I wasn’t the star, I wasn’t likable. I was a villain. I wasn’t all the things I thought I was supposed to be when I started out and yet it was a wonderful experience. And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn’t chasing.”
So, as he has teased before, “The Flash” will be his final time as Batman in the DCEU. And it doesn’t appear like he has any interest in putting on a cape or tights for any other type of superhero film in the future.
And when speaking of the future, the actor also talked about where he believes the industry is going, as a whole. After the lackluster (putting it mildly) box office performance of “The Last Duel,” Affleck sees the writing on the walls. The future of theatrical releases is going to be the very same films that he is trying to avoid. In fact, he believes that his greatest critical achievement, “Argo,” wouldn’t even get the funding to be a film if it was made today, given the financial landscape of the film industry.
“If I had to bet, a drama like ‘Argo’ would not be made theatrically now,” said Affleck. “That wasn’t that long ago. It would be a limited series. I think movies in theaters are going to become more expensive, event-ized. They’re mostly going to be for younger people, and mostly about ‘Hey, I’m so into the Marvel Universe, I can’t wait to see what happens next.’ And there’ll be 40 movies a year theatrically, probably, all IP, sequel, animated.”
It doesn’t appear like Affleck is necessarily doom and gloom about the whole future. He just thinks there’s a big paradigm shift happening, as far as which films get big releases and which don’t get made at all. And by that logic, perhaps we’ll see a major Affleck-led prestige limited series in our future?