The Flash is shaping up to be a massive DC event. The return of Ben Affleck as Batman is one of the most anticipated aspects of the film. He’ll be reuniting with Michael Keaton’s Batman, who hasn’t been on film in nearly three decades. Ben Affleck reportedly wants to bury his memories of the Justice League in a hidden cave.
The 49-year-old Oscar winner was asked about difficult periods in his recent past during an interview with the Los Angeles Times. His 2017 declaration that he would no longer direct The Batman, the Matt Reeves-directed film that will now mark Robert Pattinson’s debut as the title superhero, was one of the topics he highlighted.
After Affleck explained he has come to the realization that he should focus on career choices that make himself happy, rather than trying to trying to be a people pleaser.
Directing Batman is a good example. I looked at it and thought, ‘I’m not going to be happy doing this. The person who does this should love it.’ You’re supposed to always want these things, and I probably would have loved doing it at 32 or something. But it was the point where I started to realize it’s not worth it. It’s just a wonderful benefit of reorienting and recalibrating your priorities that once it started being more about the experience, I felt more at ease.
According to the New York Times, Affleck’s return to Batman in 2017’s Justice League was “the nadir” of his career. Affleck mentioned director Zack Snyder’s departure from the picture after the death of his daughter Autumn in May 2017 as one of the reasons for the difficult filming. Snyder was replaced by Joss Whedon, whom Affleck did not mention by name in the new interview.
It was really Justice League that was the nadir for me. That was a bad experience because of a confluence of things: my own life, my divorce, being away too much, the competing agendas and then Zack’s personal tragedy and the reshooting. It just was the worst experience. It was awful. It was everything that I didn’t like about this.
Last year, HBO Max released Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a four-hour director’s edit of the picture that has been called the “Snyder Cut” by social media users. It’s an upgrade in certain concrete respects, according to John DeFore of the Hollywood Reporter.
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