The rumors surrounding Ben Affleck's post-sadness Batman solo movie have gotten pretty out of hand in recent months. Even Affleck himself jumped into the speculation game by seemingly tweeting some serious Deathstroke news last month, followed shortly after by the official confirmation that True Blood alum Joe Manganiello would be filling the role. But when the hell are we getting this thing? According to the latest whisperings from the Warner Bros. team, fans might get their dose of Batfleck a bit sooner than expected.
Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, let slip some potentially crucial timeline details during a recent Goldman Sachs conference. "The reboot of Batman with Ben Affleck was a big success," Bewkes said, according to a report from ComicBook Sunday. "He's going to be EP on Justice League and that's helpful to that team."
Perhaps just to screw with our collective inability to retain logic when hyped AF, Bewkes then got surprisingly specific:
"Ben announced a Batman movie [that] he’s going to direct, star, write for—I think it's a year and a half out. So, the strategy worked."
Very interesting indeed. Though Bewkes' 18-month estimation could mean anything from a projected production start date to an actual (though supremely unlikely) release date, just hearing something (anything!) specific about Affleck's bat flick is pretty dope. The untitled Batman film, as actual DC stans will note, will be preceded by a few other top-shelf DC properties.
Justice League, for example, is currently gearing up for a 2017 release with some promising developments. Chopping it up with Collider back in June, director Zack Snyder urged both fans and detractors of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to keep an open mind. "The idea of drawing Superman and Batman in conflict meant that you really had to dig down into the darker parts of them to make them fight each other," Snyder said. "And I really do believe that with this movie, with Justice League, they've both been freed of the shackles of that, the responsibility to be in a place where they would fight each other."
