Ben Affleck talks about his plans for THE BATMAN and his focus on Deathstroke

That would have been really interesting to see Ben Affleck get to do his thing Batman movie. I understand why he didn’t, but I think his film would have been great.

The film would see the return of Joe Manganiello as assassin Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, and the story would see Deathstroke systematically destroy Bruce Wayne’s life, his public status as Gotham City’s foremost citizen, and his private existence as Batman. It was also previously explained that he would have a fort David Fincher atmosphere and even compared it to Fincher’s 1997 film The game. Manganiello has previously described the film, saying:

“It was a really dark story where Deathstroke was like a shark or a horror movie villain who was dismantling Bruce’s life from the inside out. 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.

Affleck recently opened up about his unmade Batman movie at Zack Snyder’s Full Circle Justice League event. He confirms that Deathstroke would have been an important component of his story and that the film would have focused on making the characters more “nuanced” and “complex”. He said:

“There were a number of them that I was exploring and, the plans were to create interesting, nuanced and complex characters, particularly for the character you mentioned. I feel like you do – I’ll just get into my preferences here – but either you make some kind of huge villain who’s so formidable that you just can’t imagine how your protagonist will be able to top that. Or you have to really populate sort of, you know, Injustice – these big group villains – where you have to get all these different characters.

Affleck went on to note that he was trying to focus on Deathstroke and make him “sound as impressive” as possible. He said:

“So at the time I was really trying to hone and focus on that character and go deep and detail about it to make it feel as impressive as I felt there was an opportunity to do that. This is the only detail I have for you.

Earlier speaking about the script, the director and artist of DC Animation Jay Olive he said, “Affleck’s original script was the best Batman script I’ve ever read. Ben had a great story and I think audiences and fans would have loved it.”

Via: The Direct