The love-in between George Clooney and Ben Affleck has been going on for a while now, with the duo praising each other at every turn. They clearly hit if off working on Amazon’s literary adaptation The Tender Bar, and Affleck even named Clooney as the best director he’s ever worked with.
For his part, Clooney has lived up to his reputation as a perennial joker, blasting his colleague for ruining the Batman franchise he’d worked so hard to establish. With the two former Dark Knights on opposite sides of the camera and the promotional trail still to come, you can bet Caped Crusader questions will be flowing on the press circuit.
Clooney looked to get the jump on that particular line of inquiry during an appearance at Deadline‘s Contenders event in London, where he lavished Affleck with adulation when describing him as an actor that doesn’t often get parts worthy of his talent, before taking the obligatory shot by naming himself as the best Batman ever.
“[He’s] a really wonderful actor who hasn’t been given a lot of great parts to show that off. I’m at the age where you grow out of them but he’s growing into them. This was exactly the right time for Ben and he was the first person we thought of [for the film]. Ben did okay with Batman but has only been named ‘sexiest man alive’ once. I don’t think anyone would argue that of all the Batmen I’ve been the best.”
Obviously, Clooney knows full well that the opposite is true, and he can’t stop apologizing for it almost 25 years later. As for Affleck, he’ll be seen next year in The Flash, but his future as Batman after that remains entirely up in the air for now.