Comic Con is obviously like Christmas for a certain type of film fan: if you get your kicks from Batman, or Star Wars or other properties that deal in moral extremes and cosplay fighting, it's basically Mecca. And it's on days like this when you can understand the obvious pain of standing for 5 hours in a queue outside Hall H hoping to get a sniff of something new and exciting, because Ben Affleck is directing Batman in 2017. Thanks to a spoiling exclusive from Deadline, it's become clear before the announcement this weekend (which Warner Bros must be DELIGHTED about) that the Oscar-winning director will team up with DC supremo Geoff Johns to also write the stand-alone for release after his long-planned adaptation of Live By Night. There's lots in that sentence to get excited about. First, Affleck the director is a monstrous talent: Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo is quite a streak regardless of who you are. For an artist formerly known as that Mallrats douchebag, it's nigh golden. Next, Geoff Johns is Mr DC: he's their chief creative officer, has written almost all of the top Justice League talents (plus Aquaman), and he scripted for Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and Smallville. His credentials to DC fans read considerably greater even than that, since he wrote Batman: Earth One. You also can't fault Affleck as a writer. As well as Gone Baby Gone and The Town, he co-wrote Good Will Hunting, so there's clearly as much power in his typewriter as there is in his camera. And of course, Affleck the actor is never better than when he's answering to Affleck the director. The script is apparently already underway, with the suggestion that it will be turned in before the end of the summer, and will reflect the Batman that emerges after Batman V Superman and Justice League (and presumably also Suicide Squad). Given that the first Justice League comes out in November 2017, and the second part in 2019, you'd have to suspect that Batman will get his bow in between, in the Marvel trend of releasing ensembles at the end of solo arcs. Affleck's Batman is one of the biggest confidence boosters for Batman V Superman, which could be any number of things (with the possibility of it being a flop haunting everyone who is excited about it), and having confirmation that he's going to be a foundation stone for the rest of the DC cinematic universe will surely see the franchise's stock rise. Not least because it implies a lot of confidence from Warner's part in Batman V Superman. So what's next? Will Suicide Squad set up another face-off with the Joker by having Jared Leto's tattooed monster escape at the end, a la Hannibal Lecter? Will whoever else survives the Suicide Squad movie reappear, or will there be new versions of old villains like The Riddler, Two Face, The Scarecrow and Poison Ivy? Hopefully, it's the first road. Batman without the Joker is second rate Batman, regardless of how you want to spin it, and Warner Bros and DC would be mad not to use Suicide Squad as a foundation to jump from (provided Leto is good, of course). Geoff Johns, hopefully, will have already told everyone that.
