We know by now that the current stay-of-play at Warners/DC when it comes to Batman is that Matt Reeves is working on The Batman 2, starring Robert Pattinson, while The Flash and IT director Andy Muschietti is currently set to direct Batman: The Brave and the Bold under the leadership of Peter Safran and James Gunn, while word is that Bumblebee and The Flash writer Christina Hodson is rumoured to be writing.
Although, after the catastrophic failure of The Flash and basically anything DC recently, it’s hard to know what the future will hold in regards to the rebooting of the DCEU/DCU.
However, while I’m still excited for the next chapter, I’m still bitter that we never got to see Ben Affleck’s Batman movie as everything we’ve heard about it seems to imply it was going to be an epic tale that would see Deathstroke unpacking all of Bruce Wayne’s darkest secrets in an attempt to end Batman forever.
Now, storyboard artist Jay Olivia, who worked on Man of Steel, BvS and Wonder Woman, has spilled some more details on the movie and just how epic Affleck’s Batman could have been.
“I can’t really say too much other than it was f@#king awesome,” Oliva says, “It was the best. It was amazing.”
Despite being unable to go into specific plot details, Oliva was able to share a bit more about the Batfleck movie that never was. Here’s what he revealed…
Olivia’s knowledge of the DC lore meant that heis duties went beyond just storyboarding, so it makes sense he would know how awesome the concept was: “From my understanding, there were a couple of drafts of it. When I was brought on, I don’t know whether it was the second draft or something, but it was what Geoff Johns and Ben [Affleck] had shown me.”
He goes on to tease: “It was tying together a lot of really cool Batman storylines that had never been really explored. I’ve worked on a lot of Batman things and what was really cool about it was, it was tying together a lot of really cool Batman storylines that had never been really explored.”
Olivia says that the story was going to really dive into the Batman mythos and flesh out the lore in a way that the movies have yet to do: “Ben’s story was gonna cover something that had never really been covered in comics but was building off of storylines in the Batman mythos over the last 80 years and approaching it from a new kind of perspective.”
He goes on: “It was very clever and there were a lot of things about it that I really loved that I wish that had come to fruition. It was a really great project in the beginning. Ben had to step away for personal reasons, and I totally understood, but the time that I spent with Ben working on the project was fantastic.”
He adds, rather cryptically: “Maybe someday I can spill the beans but I still can’t talk about it.”
Why can’t he speak about it? Are there still plans to adapt it? Could we someday see it happen with Affleck, however unlikely that seems right now? Who knows, all we can say with any real certainty right now is that it’s easy to say a movie that was never made would have been great and I’m sure the majority of filmmakers believe their movie, no matter how good or bad, is something special but, given Olivia’s attachment to DC and the DCEU as a whole, when he seems excited for what could have been as sad that it never happened, it’s hard not to wonder just how good it really would have been…
Thoughts? I know you have them! Voice-off in the usual ways on FTN’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Kevin Smith: If The Flash succeeded, a Keaton-led Batman Beyond movie was coming
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
Nerd Comments