Once upon a time, Ben Affleck was The Batman. Technically, he still is and will be for two more outings at The Batman; one, in “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” mini-series coming to HBO Max in the spring, and then another appearance in “The Flash” which is meant to be his farewell appearance for the character. In that once upon a time scenario, when Affleck was fully committed to Batman, he would direct “The Batman,” a film that Matt Reeves would eventually make and then disassociate from the current DC Extended Universe.
Early on, there were rumors that Affleck’s “The Batman,” which was connected to the old DCEU (got that?), would be David Fincher-esque. And in a recent interview with Yahoo, actor Joe Manganiello, who plays the DCEU’s Deathstroke and was going to be the villain of Affleck’s film, has pretty much confirmed that.
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“There were similarities to ‘The Game,'” Manganiello told Yahoo, referring to David Fincher’s 1997 thriller starring Michael Douglas, as a wealthy banker whose life is upended when he agrees to take part in a vast, shadowy game that actually may be much more nefarious than it seems.
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“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,” the actor explained. “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.”
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“It was really cool, really dark, and really hard,” Manganiello concluded. If you think that was too dark for Warner Bros., and that’s why it fell apart, you would be wrong. Or, at least, it never got close enough to that stage for WB to dismiss.
This all hit right around the time of Affleck’s relapse into alcoholism and when he went back into rehab and then eventually dropped out of the Batman role (only to agree to appear as him again, briefly, years later). Even without substance abuse issues, Affleck himself was never happy with the script and never felt like he had totally cracked it. So he let Matt Reeves have it, and Reeves decided to go off-piste and do his own thing. End of story. But it would be cool if the script leaked one day, right? Dare to dream.
