Storyboard Art From Ben Affleck's Scrapped THE BATMAN Shows the Dark Knight Battling Deathstroke
Once upon a time, Ben Affleck was the world’s Batman, and he had a plan to star in at least one film about the Caped Crusader. But after appearing as the character in Justice League, things fell apart, and we never got to see Affleck’s Bruce Wayne story come to life. But today we have a little treat in the form of a piece of art that was shared by the film’s storyboard artist, Jay Oliva.
In celebration of Batman Day on Saturday, Oliva shared the photo below, which sees Batman facing off against the supervillainous DC character Deathstroke.
Little has been revealed about Affleck's The Batman. But it was believed that Slade Wilson/Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) would arrive in Gotham City looking for revenge, with Zack Snyder's Justice League confirming the plan was for Lex Luthor to tell the assassin who's beneath the cape and cowl as payback for being locked in Arkham Asylum at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Oliva worked on Affleck and Geoff Johns' The Batman, and he previously said of the film:
"I can't really say too much other than it was f***ing 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."
He went on:
“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.”
It’s too bad that we never got to see Ben Affleck in the Batman feature film he had in mind. It sounds like it would have been a good time. Check out the piece of art below, and let us know what you think: