Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and The Flash come up with a plan to attack a nest of parademons with the help of some detective work from Jim Gordon. A bell rings and someone on set yells, “Cut!” Batman promptly removes his cowl, showing off some raccoon looking eyes from the eye black and walks over to the group of reporters standing beside the gigantic Gotham City Police Department rooftop set.
Suddenly, Batman is a very enthusiastic and excited Ben Affleck, who begins fielding questions of all types from reporters for almost fifteen minutes. On top of promising a more fun and humorous film with Justice League in comparison to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Affleck confirmed he will go on to direct a standalone Batman film in the near-future.
“Why I’m an executive producer is because I’m directing another one of the movies, and so there’s some cross pollination of story and characters and I don’t want to give any stuff of that away, but it just basically means that there might be some things that happen in my Batman that are affected by [this film],” Affleck starts. “Here we are in the police station in Gotham City, so there’s an example of something that might potentially also exist in that story.”
“It’s a creative way that DC came up with, both being a filmmaker driven company and entity and also making sure that the right hand sort of knows what the left hand is doing.” Affleck explains. “If there’s collaboration and supervision, so somebody doesn’t go sailing off causing problems for your movie with their movie. Basically, it’s also in a way a kind of courtesy. You know what they’re doing and so one hand knows what the other is doing. I get to weigh in on stuff that impacts the Batman stuff.”
As for when the film will arrive, Warner Brothers and Affleck seem to be on different pages (literally.) “I think they have a date for it,” Affleck says before sharing his case. “Although I don’t know that I would necessarily be able to make that date. I don’t have a script that’s ready yet. My timetable is just that I’m not going to make a movie until there’s a script that I think is good, because I’ve been on the end of things when you make movies with a script that’s not good yet and it doesn’t pan out.
“I have a script. We’re still working on it and I’m not happy enough with it yet to actually go out there and make a Batman movie, which I would have the highest of standards I would say. It’s something that would have to pass a very high bar for me. It’s not like, ‘Yeah, this might be fun. Let’s go bang this out.’”
That script, of course, is being written with DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer and new co-head of DC Films Geoff Johns, who recently confirmed his involvement to Comicbook.com.
Affleck has proven to be a very passionate filmmaker. He has won a Best Picture Oscar from the director’s chair on Argo, and won best original screenplay with Matt Damon on Good Will Hunting. His films have received some intense acclaim from audiences with efforts on Argo, The Town, and Gone Baby Gone. Affleck sounds genuinely enthused for the upcoming Batman projects which is a different look from the one he was sporting during the Batman v Superman press tour. It’s a good sign for fans of DC Comics.
Justice League is set for release November 17, 2017.
