DC on film has been in a state of chaos, upheaval, and consternation for years, and after a new reveal by storyboard artist Jay Oliva, fans should finally get the chance to read Ben Affleck’s script for his unmade Batman movie. During his tenure as the DCEU’s Dark Knight, Ben Affleck’s Batman movie was conceived as a solo story set between the first and second of Zack Snyder’s Justice League films, but Affleck’s departure from the role due to a combination of personal issues and Warner Bros. overhaul of Snyder’s DCEU plans led to the movie never being made. Of course, that’s only made Affleck’s Batman movie into a DC legend, and fans have recently gotten a tiny glimpse at what he was going for.
Batman Day 2024
On Batman Day 2024, Jay Oliva, who worked on Affleck’s Batman movie as a storyboard artist, released a storyboard of Batman doing battle with the villainous mercenary Slade Wilson a.k.a. Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello). Naturally, Oliva’s storyboard reveal has only made fans yearn for the SnyderVerse’s restoration (with Affleck’s Batman movie as a component of it) that much more. While the shaky state of Warner Bros. Discovery and DC as a cinematic franchise has made such proposals as #SellSnyderVerseToNetflix look increasingly appealing, recent developments with respect to DC have also made something else clear – it’s time for the world to finally have the chance to see Ben Affleck’s Batman screenplay.
Affleck’s Batman Script, By All Accounts, Is Amazing
Once as mysterious and elusive as the Snyder Cut itself, the script and general storyline for Ben Affleck’s unproduced Batman movie has had a great deal of light shed upon it in the last few years, largely as a byproduct of the Snyder Cut’s release. In the lead-up to the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Deathstroke actor Joe Manganiello pulled back the curtain quite a bit on what Affleck’s story entailed in an interview with ComicBook.com. Per Manganiello, Affleck’s Batman film, heavily influenced by the David Fincher suspense thriller The Game, involved Slade Wilson on a vengeful rampage that utterly wreaked havoc on Bruce Wayne’s life (as set up in Deathstroke’s meeting with Lex Luthor at the end of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.) Manganiello also revealed that Deathstroke was such a formidable opponent for the Dark Knight that it would ultimately take the combined efforts of Batman and Batgirl to defeat Slade.
Echoing Manganiello’s endorsement of Affleck’s Batman story is Jay Oliva. On multiple occasion, Oliva has spoken enthusiastically of Affleck’s Batman film, describing Affleck’s script “the best Batman script I’ve ever read”, (via Twitter/X), with Oliva also stating that Affleck’s story “was building off of storylines in the Batman mythos over the last 80 years” (via Inverse). Well-known as an early voice of information during the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement, Oliva has also done a bit of teasing for Affleck’s Batman movie, releasing multiple storyboards showcasing Batman’s smackdown with Deathstroke, most recently the aforementioned storyboard on Batman Day 2024. Additionally, writer-director Matt Reeves, who took over The Batman as a non-DCEU movie after Affleck’s departure, also praised Affleck’s story, described it as “action-driven” and ”James Bond-ian”, but ultimately not a Batman story he personally could tell, hence Reeves reworking The Batman into a non-DCEU movie (via IGN).
While Ben Affleck himself has remained relatively tight-lipped about his Batman screenplay, he did give a peek of what he was going for during a Q&A discussion at Zack Snyder’s 2023 Full Circle event. Answering a fan’s question on his Batman film, Affleck stated that he sought to center Manganiello’s Deathstroke as a singular villain in his Batman film, with Deathstroke being “one villain that is so formidable, you just can’t imagine how your protagonist is going to be able to overcome it.” (via Vero True Social). Despite these very tantalizing reveals by Manganiello, Oliva, Reeves, and Affleck, they still only reveal a partial picture of what Affleck was going for with his Batman movie. However, that is not the case with Zack Snyder’s planned Justice League sequels.
Fans Have Already Seen The Story For Zack Snyder’s Justice League Sequels – They Deserve The Same Chance For Affleck’s Batman Movie
Alongside the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League in 2021, the blueprint of Snyder’s planned Justice League 2 and Justice League 3 were unveiled at an AT&T exhibit in Dallas, Texas, with the story shown on a collection of whiteboards and even including illustrations from future DC Entertainment President Jim Lee. Snyder’s story involved the League battling the Legion of Doom (led by Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor) prior to the invasion of Apokolips, with Darkseid (Ray Porter) killing Wonder Woman and Aquaman and murdering Lois Lane (Amy Adams). Darkseid then uses the Anti-Life Equation to bring Henry Cavill’s Superman under his control and conquer Earth. However, Ben Affleck’s Batman has other plans.
With the help of the rest of the Justice League, along with Deathstroke and the Joker (Jared Leto), Batman manages to send The Flash (Ezra Miller) into the past to stop Lois’ killing by Darkseid, preventing the Knightmare future from coming to be. With the timeline reset, Superman then leads the Justice League and the armies of humanity in an epic last stand against Darkseid and Apokolips, with Batman ultimately giving his life to defeat the conqueror from the stars. 20 years later, Superman and Lois Lane’s son Bruce Kent takes on the mantle of Batman.
As one can imagine, the continued desire by many fans to see Snyder’s Justice League sequels realized is driven not just by the overall strong reception to Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the sequel teases it makes, but fans also having the basic blueprint of Snyder’s planned story in their hands. Affleck’s Batman movie, by contrast, has many more unanswered questions attached to it, but that mystery hasn’t done anything to kill off interest in it.
Considering the generally chaotic state of both DC on film and Warner Bros. in general over the last few years with no apparent end in sight, the studio releasing Affleck’s Batman script could be seen as a gesture of goodwill at a time when both Warner Bros. Discovery and their biggest IP desperately need it. And make no mistake, Warner Bros. Discovery could REALLY use some good PR, especially of the DC variety.
DC Can’t Get Out Of The Gutter & It’s Almost Entirely Warner Bros. Fault
Cinematically, DC has had a far more tumultuous history than Marvel, but that has seldom, if ever, come down to the quality of the movies themselves. By any reasonable analysis, the damage inflicted upon DC as a cinematic brand has been almost entirely self-inflicted by Warner Bros., going right back to the studio’s poorly thought-out efforts to reshape Suicide Squad and Justice League into MCU knock-offs at the eleventh hour. In the years since, Warner Bros. made every ill-conceived decision imaginable with DC, from having a generally directionless approach to guiding the post-Snyder franchise to keeping characters like Batman and Superman on the sidelines.
The Snyder Cut offered WB a chance to revive the DCEU on a silver platter, to the tune of 1.5 million #RestoreTheSnyderVerse tweets just after the movie’s release on March 25, 2021, but the studio’s then-management ignored it, with former WB CEO Ann Sarnoff declaring the movie the end of Snyder’s trilogy just four days after its release (via Variety).
Indeed, WB transparently went out of their way to try to undermine the Snyder Cut’s traction before, during, and after its release, with the studio referring to it as “a storytelling cul-de-sac” in a New York Times interview with former DC Films president Walter Hamada before its release (via The Direct), and WB virtually sitting out marketing Zack Snyder’s Justice League at all.
Then, of course, came Henry Cavill’s “Here today, gone tomorrow” Superman comeback in 2022’s Black Adam that was cancelled just two months after it happened, which remains a point of understandable bitterness among DC fans. It’s arguable that James Gunn announcing the DC Studios reboot with four DCEU films on the docket in 2023 had more than a little to do with the movies bombing theatrically. Meanwhile, the fact that Gunn’s own casting choices and projects are being carried over into the DCU (i.e. Peacemaker season two, the Waller series, The Suicide Squad-connected Creature Commandos) has also led to an understandable perception of Gunn placing a questionable favoritism upon only those DCEU projects that he himself was involved in, only adding to the bad taste many DC fans have in their mouths pre-DCU.
The most recent DC cinematic debacle came in the form of Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie A Deux being torn to shreds by critics and audiences alike and becoming 2024’s most shocking box office belly flop, especially compared to the cultural phenomenon of 2019’s Joker. That’s all without even getting into Warner Bros. Discovery presently being arguably the most unstable of any major film studio, with tons of tangential controversies pertaining to CEO David Zaslav’s management of the company, along with WBD’s stock price cratering to the cost of the average Happy Meal.
With talk of yet another merger or WBD considering licensing their IPs also becoming louder, it’s clear the studio’s woes with DC, have been of their own making their reactionary decisions, constantly pulling the plug on half-completed stories, and a general refusal on the studio’s part to own up to any of it. While WBD as whole has plenty of internal issues to resolve, undoing the damage the studio has done to DC is a much more long-term project than simply hoping that James Gunn’s reboot will save the day. And this is where Ben Affleck’s Batman script can be one piece of that puzzle.
DC Has Nothing To Lose By Releasing The Batfleck Script
Whatever labels one might wish to ascribe to Zack Snyder fans, the truth of the matter is that after a decade of being yo-yo’d, gaslit, and having the rug pulled from under them, they DO have very legitimate reasons to feel angry, disillusioned, and apathetic towards both WB and the DCU. By the same token, Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios have also backed themselves into a corner where the company is in such dire straits, Gunn’s Superman film is facing far more pressure than it should. However, WBD and DC Studios agreeing to release Affleck’s Batman script could be just the goodwill gesture both parties need to heal at least some of the lingering wounds of DC on film.
After all, with the much-hyped The Flash sadly bombing, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom underperforming its record-setting predecessor, and Joker: Folie A Deux becoming a disastrous 180 of its predecessor’s success, things just keep getting worse for DC on film. Allowing the public to actually see Ben Affleck’s planned Batman story wouldn’t simply fill in one of the last remaining gaps of the overall SnyderVerse road map, but could generate some good PR for WBD and DC. SnyderVerse fans would feel like DC Studios had at least made the effort to throw them a bone, and more curious general audiences could at least have the chance to read a Batman story penned by an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, kickstarting some much-needed positive chatter around DC as a cinematic brand.
The most obvious counterargument, of course, is that by letting the public see Affleck’s Batman script, WBD and DC Studios would not only be “caving” to an uproarious fanbase again, but potential giving more fuel to the SnyderVerse fire that they’re trying to put out. However, with their management of DC over the last few years, WB(D) have simply burned far too many bridges to think in such binary terms anymore. They need a shot in the arm of positivity for DC, nothing else they’ve tried has done it, the lack of it is burdening Gunn’s own plans in ways they shouldn’t be, and Ben Affleck’s Batman script, from the sound of it, could be one of the best Batman reads in ages.
And if by releasing the Batfleck script, the reception proved strong enough to re-awaken calls for the SnyderVerse’s completion to a degree that WBD and DC Studios simply could not ignore, well, that would be nothing more than the free market at work.
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