Ben Affleck

If you turn up your screen’s brightness and squint really hard, you might be able to juuust make out the dim figures of Batman, the Flash, Cyborg, and Wonder Woman standing heroically in a new image from Justice League.

After years of watching a certain segment of fans argue over which Enterprise captain was the best, I think it might be time for Star Trek fans to admit that they’re no longer the leader in casting fan arguments. Now all the cool kids want to argue over which Batman actor played the role best. While the obvious answer for most millennials would be Christian Bale, I tend to gravitate towards the early performances of Michael Keaton, a Batman who was a bit more believable as an intellectual than subsequent versions of the character. To each their own, I suppose.

We all know that Ben Affleck’s performance as Batman was one of the few things both critics and fans of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice could completely agree on. From his shallow playboy persona as Bruce Wayne to his thinly veiled rage as the Dark Knight, Affleck’s take on the character got everyone very excited to see what the actor-writer-director could do with a free hand for his standalone The Batman movie. Unfortunately, things have slowed considerably since, with rumors of mediocre scripts and a shifting release date taking some of the buzz off the upcoming release.

One of the biggest problems (and one that we’ve covered quite a bit) with Warner Bros’ DCEU is the way the studio is reverse-engineering its Justice League franchise. Instead of establishing their characters in individual films and slowly building toward a big crossover, they’ve done the reverse. And by building their productions around meeting a release date deadline, they wind up with films that are kind of a mess. If Ben Affleck’s approach to his Batman standalone film (and the recent decision to delay Justice League 2) is any indication, then maybe — just maybe — WB is learning from their mistakes.

With all the heroes joining Batman and Wonder Woman (and Superman) in Justice League, plus almost all of them getting their own solo movies, it’s almost impossible to find room for them all. Warner Bros. recently did a bit of reshuffling with their slate of films, and pushed back the release of Justice League: Part 2, which until now had had a mid-2019 spot, to make room for Ben Affleck’s Batman movie. And now that Snyder has some free time on his hands, he’s turning his attention to Afghanistan war thriller The Last Photograph.

The next time we see Ben Affleck’s Batman, he might be locked up.

Warner Bros. has done a little release date-shuffling, moving a few of their upcoming films around — most notably (and perhaps disappointingly) with The LEGO Movie 2, which was originally set to hit theaters in 2018 and will now arrive nine months later in 2019. The good news is that we still have two new LEGO Movie spinoffs coming in 2017, and Ben Affleck’s Live By Night will now hit theaters a bit earlier than expected.

Despite Ben Affleck’s solid turn as the caped crusader in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, some fans took issue with one particular aspect of this new Batman: he kills. It’s not entirely out of character for the iconic superhero (he’s killed people in the comic books before), but the movie and TV versions of the Dark Knight don’t typically murder bad guys. It’s part of that whole “hero” thing, you know? If you were one of the fans disappointed with Zack Snyder’s decision to have Batman kill some thugs, then boy do we have some news for you.

When Ben Affleck took the stage at Comic-Con last year to promote Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it was a mere matter of minutes before rumors began circulating that Warner Bros. was planning a new solo Batman film with Affleck set to star — and possibly direct. DC’s Geoff Johns confirmed that he was working on a script with Affleck, and since then the news has basically been repeatedly confirmed via interviews with Zack Snyder, Johns and Affleck. And now WB has gone and made it officially official by announcing that a standalone Batman film is in development with Affleck. But we already knew that.

Just a few hours after a report in The Hollywood Reporter claiming that Warner Bros. would be releasing fewer movies in the years ahead to focus on LEGO, Harry Potter and the DC Cinematic Universe, the studio has at least made good on one of those promises...

Since the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder hasn’t spent much time talking about Justice League or the future of the DC movie universe — instead, he’s mostly been explaining some of the (many, many, many) things that happen in his superhero epic. And while we anxiously await his explanation of Granny’s Peach Tea, the director is opening up about one character who wasn’t actually in the film, but whose existence was crucial to Ben Affleck’s iteration of Batman.

After Batman vs. Superman, Ben Affleck is only officially contracted to star as Batman in two more movies: the two-part Justice League film. (He also makes a cameo appearance in this summer’s Suicide Squad.) There have been rumors about Affleck directing himself in a Batman solo movie set for release in 2019 and now comes word that Affleck has already written the script...