Apparently Ben Affleck’s BATMAN Script Has Some Serious Problems and the Studio Doesn’t Care
With Ben Affleck writing the script for his solo Batman movie and attached to direct, I’ve been pretty excited to see what he will do with this character because he’s proven to be a very talented filmmaker. Unfortunately, it looks like Affleck’s Batman project may be on a rough road.
I actually liked the way Batman was portrayed in Batman v Superman. It was a little rough around the edges, but I was hoping that would be smoothed out with Justice League and The Batman. We still might get a great film, but according to screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis, the current script has serious problems.
During an interview with The Ringer, Ellis said:
“I was having dinner with a couple of executives who know other executives who are working on the [forthcoming] Batman movie, The Batman. And they were just telling me that there are serious problems with the script.”
He went on to explain that the studio executives don’t even care about these issues:
“The executives I was having dinner with were complaining about people who work on the Batman movie. And they just said they went to the studio and they said, ‘Look, the script is … Here’s 30 things that are wrong with it that we can fix.’ And [the executives] said, ‘We don’t care. We don’t really care. The amount of money we’re going to make globally, I mean 70 percent of our audience is not going to be seeing this in English. And it doesn’t really matter, these things that you’re bringing up about the flaws of the script.’ So I do think global concerns play a big part in how movies, and what movies, are being made, obviously.”
He later regretted saying these things about the script and tried to clarify his statements in a Facebook post. Obviously, he panicked when his statements exploded online:
“During a long interview with The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey we talked about reasons why studio movies are so bad now and touched on the global needs of the marketplace. I told him something I had heard about the new Batman movie as an example of what might be the problem: I was talking with two executives who have NOTHING to do with the Batman movie and who KNEW people who were involved with the production. The two executives I was having dinner with were relating the problems they had heard about the script from people working on the Batman project–that’s all. I know no one involved with the Batman movie and I didn’t realize that my comments would make it into The Ringer piece or else I wouldn’t have cited that particular movie–I have no idea what the Batman script is like and I regret that it came off as if I was disparaging the project. Another reason to be careful giving interviews.”
If the statements about the Batman film having serious problems are legit, though, that’s not the way that executives should be thinking about the movies they make. That kind of pisses me off because that’s a complete disservice to the fans! I don’t understand why they wouldn’t care about putting out quality films! This is a huge difference between Marvel and DC because Marvel actually cares about the films they make for their characters.
Just last week I wrote a rant about how cool it would be if DC let Marvel help them make their movies. Now I think that DC should just let Marvel make their films, especially if they don’t care enough to want to make great films for these classic characters. It just seems that Marvel would probably would care more about the DC films than the executives at DC. That’s pretty sad.
Of course, Affleck has already admitted that he’s not happy with the script for the solo Batman film:
“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.’”
So, at least Affleck cares about making sure the script meets his high standards before he makes the movie. That gives me some kind of hope. Of course, if he ends up dropping out of the project, then we know there are some major issues.