DC storyboard artist Jay Olivia has a lot of love for the canceled Batman film starring Ben Affleck. The movie would’ve built off of the 80 years of the Gotham superhero’s mythos.
Oliva spoke to Inverse where he touched on the movie, but couldn’t talk too much about it because of contractual stuff. He was shown a later draft by Geoff Johns and Affleck. While he wishes the movie happened, it also puts a question on how it would’ve played out, as he claimed it was going to approach those 80+ years with a “new kind of perspective.”
I can’t really say too much other than it was f****** awesome. It was the best. It was amazing. From my understanding, there were a couple of drafts of it. When I was brought on, I don’t know whether it was the second draft or something, but it was what Geoff Johns and Ben [Affleck] had shown me. I’ve worked on a lot of Batman things and what was really cool about it was, it was tying together a lot of really cool Batman storylines that had never been really explored. Ben’s story was gonna cover something that had never really been covered in comics but was building off of storylines in the Batman mythos over the last 80 years and approaching it from a new kind of perspective.
Affleck took up the Dark Knight role in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but he had to step away from the position due to personal reasons. The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, resulted from the high-profile actor stepping away.
Aside from the star, Joe Manganiello was set to continue his role as Deathstroke. Meanwhile, Batman’s GCPD confidant, Commissioner Gordon, would’ve had J.K. Simmons take up the role and Jeremy Irons playing Alfred Pennyworth. It was also supposedly going to tackle Robin’s death, this time around being Dick Grayson. It could’ve also found inspiration from the Arkham Asylum comic line.
Olivia hopes that one day he can “spill the beans,” but he still can’t talk about it, and we may never hear much of anything about this hyped-up DCEU film.
Gabriel enjoys all things entertainment from writing about video games as the Managing Editor for PSX Extreme to covering the latest film and TV news for his own publication — Early Reel. Follow him on X.