As well as spending over two decades as one of the most recognizable actors in Hollywood, Ben Affleck is also a highly accomplished filmmaker in his own right, even though it took him a further ten years to make his feature-length directorial debut and write another script after winning an Academy Award for Good Will Hunting‘s screenplay alongside Matt Damon at the age of just 25.
Affleck went on to experience a huge career resurgence on the other side of the camera as the critically-acclaimed director of Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Best Picture winner Argo, so it came completely out of the blue when he was first announced as the DCEU’s Batman, especially when his experience on Daredevil looked to have sworn him off the comic book genre for good.
The Armageddon star would surprise everyone by being one of the best things in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, so much so that the very same people who were quick to deride his initial casting were left heartbroken when he quietly retired from the role, abandoning his take on The Batman in the process and causing Warner Bros. to hit the reboot button instead.
However, after months of rumors and speculation, it was finally confirmed yesterday that he would be suiting up to join Michael Keaton in reprising the part of Bruce Wayne in The Flash. Now, a new report offers some more details on Affleck’s return, with the 48 year-old indicating that he wanted some changes made to the script before he agreed to sign on.
“According to an insider with knowledge of the project, conversations with Affleck started in the last couple of months to pique his interest in joining The Flash. Before committing, Affleck had notes on the script which were addressed in the draft given to him last week, and he finally agreed to join the project in the last couple of days.”
You can completely understand why Affleck wanted the script to be up to his standards given his status as a respected and award-winning writer, not to mention the fact that he’d be well aware of the huge increase in publicity and media scrutiny that would come with the news of his return in The Flash, which was one of the reasons he quit playing Batman in the first place.