Yahoo News UPDATE: Affleck debunks rumours he's leaving Batman.
Despite rumours yesterday that Ben Affleck wouldn't definitely be starring in The Batman, having already passed on directing duties, Affleck turned up to the Justice League panel and San Diego Comic-Con to reassure fans that he absolutely would be doing Matt Reeves movie.
Speaking to a VERY excited Hall H, before the brand new Justice League trailer was revealed, Affleck said:
"I am the luckiest guy in the world. Batman is the coolest part in any universe, Marvel DC, anything–I'm so thrilled to do it. Its fucking amazing. I still can't believe it.
"Everyone at the studio tells me I'm their Batman and I believe it. And Matt Reeves? I'd be an ape on the ground for Matt Reeves. I'm blown away and its an exciting time in the DC Universe. I'm excited to be Batman."
Whether he'll continue with the role following The Batman is unconfirmed but since The Batman doesn't yet have a release date that's a way off yet.
ORIGINAL STORY BELOW
Storm clouds may unfortunately be gathering over the DC Extended Universe once again.
Just when DC Entertainment seemed to have turned a corner with the smashing success of Wonder Woman as the summer's biggest blockbuster so far, there seems to be instability with another of the DCEU's cornerstones.
Twenty-four hours before the cast of Justice League are expected to appear before a packed Hall H crowd at Comic-Con International, there are new questions about Ben Affleck's future as Batman.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Affleck is no longer definite to star in director Matt Reeves's The Batman or don the cowl of the Caped Crusader on the big screen ever again.
Warner Bros has apparently already begun looking into ways it can pass the torch from Affleck to another actor for any future Batman films, in a way that acknowledges the change on-screen. It's not exactly clear what led up to this potential shift.
Digital Spy has reached out to Ben Affleck's representatives for comment on this latest development.
One encouraging sign is that Warner Bros's chief executive Toby Emmerich commented on Friday: "Ben is our Batman. We love him as Batman. We want to keep him in the cowl as long as we can."
It is currently unknown whether Warner Bros would actually have another actor step in as Bruce Wayne or simply use one of the other DC Comics characters who have donned the cowl over the decades - Dick Grayson (aka Nightwing) and Commissioner Jim Gordon among them.
Affleck was originally attached to co-write, produce, direct and star in the first solo movie Batman film of the DC Extended Universe when the movie was first announced last year.
But when push came to shove on the project, the Academy Award winner announced in January that he'd dropped out as director… to be replaced shortly thereafter by Matt Reeves.
Reeves confirmed this summer that he'd scrapped a script that Affleck had worked on with DC Entertainment guru Geoff Johns and would be moving ahead with his own vision.
The filmmaker laid out that vision in a recent Digital Spy interview, in which he compared Batman to the conflicted rebel leader in his most recent movie War for the Planet of the Apes.
"I think [Christopher] Nolan's films did [maturity] and I think Batman as a myth is a very similar myth [to Caesar's from Apes], in that he's a tortured soul who is struggling to find a way to do the right thing in a very imperfect world," Reeves told us.
"As Caesar is part of the Apes franchise, the Apes franchise was a huge part of my childhood, and Batman was a huge part of my childhood too, yet weirdly both of them have the potential of speaking not down to an audience but being ambitious.
"I think the thing that I'm excited about is the idea of trying to tell a very point-of-view-driven, emotional story from that perspective in the same way that I tried to do with Caesar. I think there's a way to tell his story that could be very emotional."
While The Batman has no release date yet, we're guaranteed to see Ben Affleck at least once more when Justice League opens on November 17. Watch a teaser below:
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