DCEU: Ben Affleck Had Written "The Best Batman Script"
And Deathstroke WAS involved...
It feels like eons since Ben Affleck announced that he was going to be making the next Batman stand-alone film as part of the DCEU, taking on the writing as well as directing and acting in the exciting project. All told, the information that came out of that version of the project was mostly limited to the revelation that Deathstroke was going to be involved in a big way, but beyond that, nothing seemed concrete.
Rumours suggested that the writing process was becoming difficult and Warner Bros and Affleck couldn't get on the same page, which is why he stepped away from the project. But according to one inside voice, there was no problem with the script. In fact, it was the best Batman script he'd ever read.
That's according to director Jay Oliva, who has directed a number of animated DC movies for Warner Bros (including The Dark Knight Returns, Bad Blood and Justice League Dark) and who works for both Marvel and DC as a movie storyboard artist. So he knows a thing or two about making comic book movies, in other words.
He responded to a tweet from Batman-On-Film's Bill Ramey about problems with Affleck's script to offer his thoughts on the cancelled project...
Interestingly, Oliva also confirmed that Affleck's The Batman would have had some great Batman/Deathstroke stuff that he himself was involved in (presumably as an artist) and confirmed me worked with both Affleck and Geoff Johns as they put a script together.
That "best Batman script" is a pretty major thing, particularly since Oliva actually would have read around 16 Batman movie scripts (including Justice League releases he worked on). And that's assuming he's not talking about all of the actually released Batman movies to date, which would make it even more of a big deal.
It's just a shame we won't get to see if his claims have substance (though hopefully his presence on the early draft project means there MAY be storyboard art out there somewhere that could come out in the future?)
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