Ben Affleck won’t be responding to the Bat Signal — ever again.
The Oscar-winning actor made his debut as the Dark Knight in 2016’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” before reprising the role in films like 2017’s “Justice League” and 2023’s “The Flash,” but he’ll never be Batman.
Affleck opened up about the “excruciating experience” of playing the superhero in a new interview.
This comes after he told the Los Angeles Times in 2022 that it was “awful” and “the worst experience.”
“There are a number of reasons why that was a really excruciating experience,” Affleck shared with GQ in an interview published on Tuesday, March 25. “And they don’t all have to do with the simple dynamic of, say, being in a superhero movie or whatever.
The star — who is making the rounds promoting “The Accountant 2,” the follow-up to the 2016 thriller — explained he’s “not interested in going down that particular genre again.”
For him, it’s “not because of that bad experience, but just: I’ve lost interest in what was of interest about it to me. But I certainly wouldn’t want to replicate an experience like that.”
Affleck continued by listing everything that went wrong while putting some of the blame on himself.
“A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations. And also by the way, I wasn’t bringing anything particularly wonderful to that equation at the time, either. I had my own failings, significant failings, in that process and at that time,” he said.
“I mean, my failings as an actor, you can watch the various movies and judge,” Affleck continued. “But more of my failings of, in terms of why I had a bad experience, part of it is that what I was bringing to work every day was a lot of unhappiness. So I wasn’t bringing a lot of positive energy to the equation. I didn’t cause problems, but I came in and I did my job and I went home. But you’ve got to do a little bit better than that.”
The actor was facing several personal issues around the time he filmed “Batman v Superman” in 2014.
His 10-year marriage to Jennifer Garner crumbled in June 2015, with the pair announcing their separation. The actor was also struggling with alcohol.
In March 2017, he announced that he had again “completed treatment for alcohol addiction” following his 2001 rehab stint.
Affleck told GQ that he started his production company, Artists Equity, in an attempt to “avoid” what he experienced during his days as Batman.
“I want to put together partnerships and filmmakers and cast and a studio apparatus that’s aligned, where precisely that kind of misalignment doesn’t happen and you have a much better work experience,” he stated.
The actor also explained that while he enjoyed playing a “sort of older, broken, damaged Bruce Wayne,” it wasn’t necessarily what the DC Universe or the studio wanted.
“What happened was it started to skew too old for a big part of the audience,” Affleck said. “Like even my own son at the time was too scared to watch the movie. And so when I saw that I was like, ‘Oh s–t, we have a problem.’ Then I think that’s when you had a filmmaker that wanted to continue down that road and a studio that wanted to recapture all the younger audience at cross purposes. Then you have two entities, two people really wanting to do something different and that is a really bad recipe.”
Affleck’s comments mirror that of Robert Pattinson, who recently said he’s concerned he’ll be “too old” to play the Caped Crusader in “The Batman Part II” by the time production begins.
The original release date of director Matt Reeves’ sequel to the 2022 flick has been pushed back years for undisclosed issues.
“The Batman Part II” was originally slated for an October 2025 release, reported Collider, but was moved aside before landing the newest date of October 1, 2027, and hasn’t even started filming yet.
When asked by Hero magazine earlier this month, “Are you going to do Batman again soon?” the actor responded, “I f–king hope so. I started out as young Batman and I’m going to be f–king old Batman by the sequel.”
Pattinson followed up by saying, “I’m 38, I’m old.”
Affleck’s latest comments on the superhero franchise weren’t the only tea he spilled in his interview with GQ.
He also dished on his failed marriage to Jennifer Lopez, revealing they had different “temperaments.”
Affleck and Lopez married in 2022. She filed for divorce in 2024, on the two-year anniversary of their second wedding ceremony. The exes settled the end of their marriage months ago, in January.
But she wasn’t his only ex-wife who entered the chat.
Affleck gushed over his relationship with Garner, whom he finalized his divorce with in October 2018, saying he’s “really lucky” to co-parent their three children with such a “wonderful” partner.
