The negative critical response to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League left Ben Affleck with doubts about continuing as the DC Extended Universe's Caped Crusader.
While he wrote a screenplay alongside Geoff Johns, the actor ultimately chose to walk away from the director's chair of The Batman. He even hung up the cape and cowl - meaning Matt Reeves could reboot the hero with Robert Pattinson - until his brief return in The Flash last year.
That was meant to lead to bigger things but...we all know how that turned out.
Little has been revealed about Affleck's The Batman. However, it's believed Slade Wilson/Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) would arrive in Gotham City looking for revenge, with Zack Snyder's Justice League confirming the plan was for Lex Luthor to tell the assassin who's beneath the cape and cowl (payback for being locked in Arkham Asylum at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).
Storyboard artist Jay Oliva worked on Affleck and Johns' The Batman and, to celebrate "Batman Day" yesterday, he shared more of his work from the movie. As you can see below, it showcases an action-packed battle as the Dark Knight squares off with the Terminator.
"I can't really say too much other than it was f***ing awesome," Oliva previously said of The Batman. "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."
"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," he continued. "It was very clever and there were a lot of things about it that I really loved that I wish that had come to fruition."
"It was a really great project in the beginning. Ben had to step away for personal reasons, and I totally understood, but the time that I spent with Ben working on the project was fantastic."
The artist is a longtime collaborator of Zack Snyder's and, as well as working on the filmmaker's DCEU movies, they recently reunited for Netflix's animated Twilight of the Gods.
We'll never know how good this version of The Batman would have been, though it's hard to complain too much about it not happening, particularly when it's given us Matt Reeves' "The Batman Epic Crime Saga."