Ben Affleck's BATMAN Movie Would Have Built Upon 80 Years of Batman Stories

Ben Affleck’s The Batman was a movie that I know a lot of fans would have loved to see get made, but unfortunately, it just wasn’t meant to be.

The movie would have followed Joe Manganiello as assassin Slade Wilson, a.k.a. Deathstroke, and it would have seen the villain systematically destroying Bruce Wayne’s life, his public status as Gotham City’s leading citizen, and his private existence as Batman. It was also previously explained that it would have had a strong David Fincher vibe and it was even compared to David Fincher’s 1997 film The Game.

In a recent interview with Inverse, DC alumni Jay Oliva offered some additional insight on Affleck's The Batman saying it would have built upon 80 years of Batman mythos. He said:

"I can't really say too much other than it was f—king awesome. It was the best. It was amazing. From my understanding, there were a couple of drafts of it. When I was brought on, I don't know whether it was the second draft or something, but it was what Geoff Johns and Ben [Affleck] had shown me.”

I hate hearing that kind of stuff because it makes me wish we would have actually seen the movie get made! Oliva went on to say:

"I've worked on a lot of Batman things and what was really cool about it was, it was tying together a lot of really cool Batman storylines that had never been really explored. Ben's story was gonna cover something that had never really been covered in comics but was building off of storylines in the Batman mythos over the last 80 years and approaching it from a new kind of perspective. It was very clever and there were a lot of things about it that I really loved that I wish that had come to fruition. It was a really great project in the beginning. Ben had to step away for personal reasons, and I totally understood, but the time that I spent with Ben working on the project was fantastic. Maybe someday I can spill the beans, but I still can't talk about it."

Just talk about it! The movie’s never going to get made now, someone should just leak that script online! Manganiello previously described the film:

“It was a really dark story in which Deathstroke was like a shark or a horror movie villain that was dismantling Bruce’s life from the inside out. It was this systemic thing: He killed everyone close to Bruce and destroyed his life to try and make him suffer because he felt that Bruce was responsible for something that happened to him.”

Affleck also talked about his unmade Batman film saying the film would have focused on making the characters more “nuanced” and “complex.” He said:

“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.”

Affleck went on to note that he was trying to focus on Deathstroke and make him “seem as impressive” as he could. He said:

“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.”

The more I learn about Affleck’s Batman movie, the more I want to see it and we will never see it! It’s so damn sad.