Official announcement is expected at Comic-Con 2015

Jul 10, 2015 13:21 GMT  ·  By
Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne / Batman in "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice"
   Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne / Batman in "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice"

Warner Bros. is taking a massive gamble on Ben Affleck: long before he’s scheduled to make his debut as Batman in the 2016 film “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” the studio is setting the wheels in motion so that he gets his standalone film - one that he will also co-write and direct.

That sound you’re hearing is an outraged “Noooo!!!” from the fans who are still not ok with the idea of Affleck as the famous Caped Crusader. Or Batfleck, as they call it.

Comic-Con 2015 is about to explode, probably

This isn’t confirmed yet, but Deadline claims to have it on very good authority that it’s happening. Moreover, an announcement in this sense is expected at San Diego Comic-Con 2015, now underway, at the Warners panel scheduled for this weekend.

If this report turns out to be true, expect Comic-Con to explode.

Meanwhile, here’s what we know: apparently, Affleck is co-writing the script with Geoff Johns, the DC Comics Chief Creative Officer. Deadline says they’ve already found their creative flow as a team and might even turn the first draft of the script by the end of the summer.

Naturally, the story will be of the Batman that emerges from “Dawn of Justice” (March 2016), but the standalone movie won’t come before the first “Justice League” film, which will be out in November 2017.

Affleck is now working on “Live by Night,” which he’s directing, so production on the “Batfleck movie” will only start after this one wraps. Once it’s in production, Warners will probably rush the release, even bumping other releases from its schedule to make room for it.  

Deadline is convinced that Warners gave Affleck the chance to write and direct his own movie because of his Oscar win for “Argo.” This actually goes hand in hand with what he told EW just recently, about accepting the role: if he ever wanted to direct a project on this scale, he needed to see how things work as an actor first, he said.

Chances are this was the plan all along.

Quite a gamble on Warners’ part

In fact, the rumor that Affleck would get his standalone pic has been around since June last year, so that’s probably when everything was set in motion.

As of now, it’s still just an unconfirmed rumor, but having Deadline report on it means there’s some truth to it. So we’ll just assume that it’s happening.

Warner Bros. is taking a huge gamble on Batfleck, especially considering the backlash his casting created. We’re talking online petitions to have him replaced, op-eds arguing why he was a bad choice and the cries of thousands on social media swearing off all future Warner Bros. superhero movies.

Many of these fans either still feel the same way or have reluctantly agreed to reserve judgment until the film comes out.

The bottom line is that Affleck is yet to prove himself to audiences as a worthy Batman, so having Warners take such a leap of faith with him means one of 2 things: either they know something the fans don’t (in which case Batfleck will be awesome) or they don’t care about alienating fans by the thousands.