With Ben Affleck’s Batman movie gearing up to go into production next year, a rather nasty rumour has surfaced over at The Ringer suggesting that “there are serious problems with the script”, and that executives at Warner Bros. aren’t overly concerned about fixing them as “it doesn’t really matter” due to the amount of money the film will make.
The rumour comes from Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, who claims that: “I was having dinner with a couple of executives who know other executives who are working on the Batman movie, The Batman. And they were just telling me that there are serious problems with the script. And that the executives I was having dinner with were complaining about people who work on the Batman movie. And they just said they went to the studio and they said, ‘Look, the script is … Here’s 30 things that are wrong with it that we can fix.’ And [the executives] said, ‘We don’t care. We don’t really care. The amount of money we’re going to make globally, I mean 70 percent of our audience is not going to be seeing this in English. And it doesn’t really matter, these things that you’re bringing up about the flaws of the script.’”
Obviously we need to take Ellis’ comments with a healthy pinch of salt, and it’s entirely possible that this is little more than gossip and hearsay. The only thing that seems to lend any support to the rumour is that Affleck himself has said earlier this year that he wasn’t quite happy with the script and that “there is no Batman movie yet”, while Warner Bros. seems intent on pressing ahead with an early-to-mid 2017 production date. Could the studio be pressuring Affleck to push on with the film before the script is ready?
UPDATE: Ellis has now commented further on Facebook, backtracking from his original remarks somewhat:
“During a long interview with The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey we talked about reasons why studio movies are so bad now and touched on the global needs of the marketplace. I told him something I had heard about the new Batman movie as an example of what might be the problem: I was talking with two executives who have NOTHING to do with the Batman movie and who KNEW people who were involved with the production. The two executives I was having dinner with were relating the problems they had heard about the script from people working on the Batman project–that’s all. I know no one involved with the Batman movie and I didn’t realize that my comments would make it into The Ringer piece or else I wouldn’t have cited that particular movie–I have no idea what the Batman script is like and I regret that it came off as if I was disparaging the project. Another reason to be careful giving interviews.”
Let’s hope if there is any truth to it that there’s still enough time to iron out any issues. After all, another “creative differences” incident would be a disaster for Warner Bros. given that they also need Affleck in front of the camera…
Originally published November 5, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
