Ben Affleck has been doing the rounds to promote his latest film, The Tender Bar, and talk has inevitably turned to his tenure as Batman in Warner Bros.' DCEU, which was cut short due to a number of factors shortly after the release of Justice League.
The actor recently revealed that his time working on the superhero team-up movie was far from positive, and has now elaborated on his "awful" experience shooting - and re-shooting - the critically panned endeavour.
"It was really Justice League that was the nadir for me," Affleck told the LA Times when asked about his decision to hang up the cape and cowl. "That was a bad experience because of a confluence of things: my own life, my divorce, being away too much, the competing agendas and then Zack's personal tragedy and the reshooting. It just was the worst experience. It was awful. It was everything that I didn’t like about this. That became the moment where I said, 'I’m not doing this anymore.' It’s not even about, like, Justice League was so bad. Because it could have been anything."
Affleck was all set to direct The Batman (or an earlier version of the project) before stepping away and handing the reigns to Matt Reeves, and went on to confirm that his heart simply wasn't in it at the time.
"I looked at it and thought, 'I’m not going to be happy doing this. The person who does this should love it.' You’re supposed to always want these things, and I probably would have loved doing it at 32 or something. But it was the point where I started to realize it’s not worth it. It’s just a wonderful benefit of reorienting and recalibrating your priorities that once it started being more about the experience, I felt more at ease."
Affleck did return as the Dark Knight to film some additional scenes for the "Snyder Cut" of Justice League, and will play the iconic vigilante one last time in The Flash.