It’s ironic that James Gunn often gets accused of playing favorites when it comes to his projects – something that’s become an increasing source of criticism among his detractors – when Ben Affleck has made it abundantly clear which side of the DCU divide his loyalties lie.
The freshly-installed co-CEO publicly claimed that he was interested in having the two-time Academy Award winner helm a project for the new and hopefully improved shared superhero universe, only for Affleck to state the opposite and offer that he had no interest in stepping behind the camera to call the shots on a DCU project.
The SnyderVerse crowd took that as a huge victory, and they scored another major one yesterday when Affleck made a surprise appearance at Zack Snyder’s Full Circle event, where he ended up dropping new details on his plans for how to approach the characters of his version of The Batman.
“There were a number of them that I was kind of exploring. And, the plans were to make interesting, nuanced, complex characters, in particular to the character you mentioned. I kind of feel like either you do – I’m just going to get into my own preference here – but either you do a kind of massive one villain that is so formidable you just can’t imagine how your protagonist is going to be able to overcome it.
Or you have to really sort of populate kind of, you know, Injustice – these big group villains – where you have to get all these different characters. So I was at the time really trying to hone in and focus on that character and get into depth and detail about it to make him seem as impressive as I felt there was the opportunity to do. That’s the only detail I have for you.”
Affleck’s grizzled veteran was due to be facing off against Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke in The Batman V1.0, but the would-be co-writer, producer, and director hasn’t been shy in making it known that he won’t be returning to DC after The Flash as either an on or off-camera talent.
