Having served as producer on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, Charles Roven is now involved with the latest incarnation of the Caped Crusader, as Zack Snyder’s brings together Ben Affleck’s Dark Knight and Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel for the eagerly-anticipated 2016 sequel Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. During a Hollywood Masters interview for LMU Film School, Roven has now spoken about the casting of Ben Affleck, as well as stating how this interpretation of Bruce Wayne / Batman differs from previous versions, and teasing the expansion of the DC movie universe leading up to the Justice League movie.
“We knew that we wanted a very mature Batman, because we wanted to juxtapose him against this young Superman, so we wanted a guy who was tougher, rugged, had signs of life, had lived a hard life,” states Roven. “We wanted the guy to have chops, for sure. When we went down that list there just weren’t a tremendous number of guys that we felt could carry that. We also wanted the guy to have a big stature, Ben is 6′ 3″ or 6′ 4″, Henry is 6′ or 6′ 1″, we wanted Batman to tower over Superman, where Superman needed to look up to Batman, and Ben could do that… And so he was the first guy we went to, that’s who we wanted. What he did do was make sure he understood what Zack was looking for, he wanted to know exactly how Zack planned on treating this Bruce Wayne that was going to make him completely different, even though he was still Bruce Wayne, still Batman. [Ben] is a much more social animal in the Bruce Wayne incarnation, but he’s also an extremely rough guy in the Batman incarnation. Very, very, very rough.”
“I don’t think it’s a secret that, you know it’s called Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Warner Bros. have announced a number of DC properties that are going to be made over the next five years, including Justice League,” Roven continued. “So the biggest difference between what Chris did in The Dark Knight Trilogy and what we’re doing now is Bruce Wayne, Batman lived in a closed universe in that there’s no superheroes… When we embarked on Man of Steel one of the things we were doing was creating a universe that had a superhero in it, because Superman is clearly a superhero, he has super powers, he comes from another planet. Once we did that it was with the knowledge that if the movie was successful we could expand the universe with other characters.”
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hits theaters on March 25th, 2016 with Zack Snyder directing a cast that includes returning Man of Steel stars Henry Cavill (Superman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White) and Harry Lennix (General Swanwick) alongside Ben Affleck (Argo) as Batman, Gal Gadot (Fast & Furious 6) as Wonder Woman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jesse Eisenberg (Now You See Me) as Lex Luthor, Jeremy Irons (The Borgias) as Alfred Pennyworth and Holly Hunter (The Piano), Callan Mulvey (300: Rise of an Empire), Tao Okamoto (The Wolverine) and Scoot McNairy (Argo) in as-yet-unrevealed roles.
Originally published October 14, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
