Ben Affleck: ‘I’m not working on the Justice League’

Ben Affleck is not going to be directing Warner Bros.' upcoming Justice League movie. He said so himself.

If you’ve been following our ongoing coverage of Warner Bros. upcoming, still-hypothetical movie based on DC Comics’ Justice League superhero team, then you no doubt know that Ben Affleck was rumored to be assuming the role of the director (and possibly one of the stars) for the movie. Likewise, you also probably know that other, separate rumors claim that Affleck will not be directing. With so many conflicting reports, who is a person to believe?

How about Affleck himself?

“I’m not working on the Justice League,” Affleck recently told Vancouver, BC news organization 24 Hours Vancouver. “One of the problems with entertainment web sites is that they need to fill pages, and that’s how rumours get started. Justice League sounds really exciting, but it’s not something I’m working on.”

24 Hours then attempts to work around Affleck’s own words by saying that just because the man is not currently working on Justice League, that does not mean that he wouldn’t be up for it in the future. This movie is still a ways away from entering production, so why couldn’t Affleck sign on later? Or so the site’s reasoning seems to go.

We however, are done with this. If Ben Affleck says he’s not directing Justice League, then as far as we’re concerned he’s not directing Justice League. Until an official press release contradicts this idea, we think it would be more prudent to speculate on other possible directors than to constantly flog this “Affleck as Justice League director” idea to death. Intriguingly, there are new rumors circulating that the Wachowski siblings are among Warner Bros.’ prospective auteurs, and despite their middling success since The Matrix, you can’t deny that a Wachowski-helmed Justice League flick would, at the very least, be a massive visual spectacle — and call us shallow, but we kinda dig Wachowski-brand spectacle, even if it’s severely lacking in complementary substance.

Excitement aside, and as much as this is quite literally our job, can we place a moratorium on Justice League director rumors? We aren’t going to get Christopher Nolan to helm this project, Affleck is presumably out and that Wachowskis thing I just mentioned is as likely to be entirely made up as it is to be legitimate. Maybe those other sites mentioned by Affleck that desperately need to pad out their page views can’t see what’s going on here, but we’re growing tired of reporting on what is effectively a lack of information. We’d convey the same meaning and ramifications by telling you all kid’s fairy tales. You know the Three Billy Goats Gruff, right? Not only is that a great story, it’s also exactly as likely to come true as any of these rumors. Let’s make a pact here: You won’t read any of this stuff, we won’t write about it, and instead we’ll all focus on something more important (like, literally anything else). Deal?

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Ben Affleck may not direct Justice League after all

Despite earlier reports, it seems that Ben Affleck is most likely not going to be directing the WB's Justice League film.

As much as we hate playing into the “he said, she said, his or her people said” game of entertainment journalism, since we already told you guys yesterday that Warner Bros. was keen to have Ben Affleck helm its inevitable movie based on DC Comics’ Justice League, it seems that Affleck himself isn’t really in support of this plan. At least, that’s the case assuming you believe Deadline over Variety.

Yesterday, as you’ll recall, we reported on a piece Variety had published claiming that Affleck had become the WB’s first choice for director after Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan made it clear that he was out of the superhero movie biz. That seemed reasonable for a number of reasons, outlined in our previous article. However, this morning, Deadline posted a piece claiming that it had been in contact with people close to Affleck who say that the man has no intention of joining the production.

Now, it makes sense that Warner Bros would offerAffleck the project. Chris Nolan is top man over there, but after three Batfilms and after producing the Superman reboot Man of Steel, he’s gotten spandex-clad protagonists out of his system. After Nolan, the studio then offers everything else to Harry Potter director David Yates (who is now keen on Tarzan) and Affleck, who has become a major director with Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and the upcoming Argo. Just because the studio wants Affleck doesn’t mean he will do the movie, and several sources tell me he might take a meeting, but that’s it.

While Deadline seems sure of its claims, it offers scant few reasons why Affleck would refuse the opportunity. It does point out that Affleck likely would only want to take on this project if he has figured out a clever way to create a film that might possibly top Joss Whedon’s mega-successful Marvel Studios flick The Avengers, but beyond that Deadline’s entire piece hinges on the site’s anonymous sources who don’t see Affleck’s involvement with Justice League to be very likely.

In the end, it basically comes down to who you trust more: Variety or Deadline. We don’t want to take sides here since we can’t even claim to have insider information on this topic, so it looks like we’ll have to wait and see what happens with this film when/if Warner Bros. gets around to making official personnel decisions. In the meantime, we’ll again point out that Affleck would be a perfectly reasonable choice for the project — the man both has superhero movie experience and is a surprisingly competent director — but that at the same time Deadline does make a good point: Why would Affleck want to attach himself to such a high-profile project when it inherently brings with it such a massively high expectations?

We fully expect to see the Justice League movie hit theaters at some point in the near future, but as much as we’d like to offer you guys some solid info on the flick, thanks to Variety and Deadline’s disagreement, we’re back to knowing absolutely nothing useful about this production. Apologies to any of you who got prematurely excited.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com