Ben Affleck’s Axed Batman Movie Was ‘F—ing Awesome’ and Built on 80 Years of Mythos, Says Storyboard Artist: ‘It Was the Best’

Jay Oliva, a storyboard artist who worked on several DC and Warner Bros. movies such as Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman, recently opened up to Inverse about Ben Afflecks scrapped standalone Batman movie. Affleck debuted as Batman in Zack Snyders Dawn of Justice and reprised the role in Justice League. He was developing his own Batman movie to direct and star in before deciding to exit the role.

I cant really say too much other than it was fucking awesome, Oliva told Inverse about Afflecks Batman movie. It was the best. It was amazing. From my understanding, there were a couple of drafts of it. When I was brought on, I dont know whether it was the second draft or something, but it was what Geoff Johns and Ben [Affleck] had shown me.

Ive 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, Oliva continued. Bens 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.

Affleck said back in 2019 that he left the Batman movie because he just couldnt come up with a version for the story. I couldnt crack it, he added.

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, Oliva said about the project. 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. Maybe someday I can spill the beans, but I still cant talk about it.

Also attached to Afflecks version of the film was cinematographer Robert Richardson, who had previously worked on Afflecks Live By Night.

In a 2019 interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Richardson confirmed Afflecks Batman script was finished and not exactly beloved by everyone involved in the films development. Hesaid Afflecks film would have showed the darker side of Batman.

Well, [Affleck] was going more into the insanity aspects, Richardson said. So I think you wouldve seen something a little darker than what weve seen in the past and more into the individual, who was inside Batman what element may be sane and what element may actually not be sane. So he was entering into a little more of the Arkham, as you know, hes going into where you keep everyone who was bad, everyone that shifted and Batman. And so that whole aspect was sort of, it was very fascinating to go to the darker side of Batman.

When Affleck exited the Batman project, Matt Reeves stepped in to develop what would become his Robert Pattinson-starring The Batman.