If you’re among the countless superhero movie fans who think DC needs to lighten up a bit, we’ve got some good news for you. Following Jason Momoa sharing how full of laughs the Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom script is, another (and pretty unexpected) DC star has come forward singing praises of the studio’s upcoming line-up of caped-crusades: Ben Affleck.
While Affleck has been pretty vocal about his struggles with portraying the Dark Knight, ultimately revealing he dropped out of The Batman movie out of worries the dark script would lead to further alcohol abuse, for the first time in quite a while the actor seems pretty happy with the state of the DC Universe and his role within it. According to an exclusive interview with Variety, Affleck stated he had a ‘really fun’ time playing reprising the role of Batman in the upcoming DC film The Flash.
“It was a really nice way to revisit that as the prior experience had been difficult. This was really lovely. Really fun [..] I had a great time. I’m probably under some gag order that I’m not even aware that I probably just violated and I’m now going to be sued.”
This interview and Affleck’s newfound sunny disposition come a year and a half after the actor opened up about how difficult filming Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and Justice League had been for him. According to Affleck, following the back-to-back filming of these movies he largely lost passion for the character and telling superhero stories.
“We had a script. I liked the script, I wrote it with Geoff Johns, who I have a lot of respect for. It just so happened that I had done a couple of those movies, and I kind of lost my passion for it. You know what I mean? I kind of lost my passion for telling those stories, I got interested in telling stories more like [The Way Back], and it just seemed like very clear to me that if it’s not the most important thing in the world to you, you’re not going to make a very good movie. The movie deserves to be made by someone whose dying to do it and can’t wait, and that wasn’t me at the time, so I moved on.”
Of course, we now know ultimately Robert Pattinson would take up the mantle left by Affleck and star as Batman in Matt Reeve’s The Batman, which the director claimed will be the “most emotional Batman movie ever made” in a recent interview. The Batman hits theaters March 4, 2022, followed by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Black Adam on July 29 and The Flash on November 4, in which we’ll see Affleck and Ezra Miller team up once again to save the universe.