Ben Affleck and Geoff Johns co-writing ‘Batman’ solo flick; Affleck directing
Woah. Like, I don’t really enjoy Geoff Johns that often, but this is still somewhat cool to me. Also — very excited that Affleck is directing.
The Warner Bros. panel doesn’t begin at Comic Con until Saturday morning, but big news has already hit. Ben Affleck will star in a solo Batman film to follow the Justice League film, and he’ll also direct the movie. The production will follow Affleck’s adaptation of the novel Live By Night, which was just formally set by Warner Bros. this week.
Deadline reports, and Affleck’s involvement seems to be even deeper than starring and directing. He’ll also co-write withGeoff Johns. The precise release plan for this film is unclear, but given the timeline of various productions, this will be a couple years down the road.
Deadline reports that Affleck and Johns have already got a script cooking, and that their script may be turned in well before Affleck begins production on Live By Night. That film was originally set for October 2016 but delayed when the DC Comics films took priority. We still don’t know the release date for Live By Night, nor whether this new Batman movie will push it around further.
We don’t know what the story might be, much less how it will relate to the two DC films featuring Batman that will be released beforehand. We’ve known that Warner Bros. wanted to do solo Batman films ever since WB made the big DC schedule announcement last year, and we’ve guessed that Affleck would be a likely director. But whether this will carry on the chronological series of events begun in Man of Steel — which seems most likely — or veer off in a related but different direction remains to be seen.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is set for release in March 2016, and Justice League is set for November 2017