Two years after the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Ben Affleck is reflecting on his role as Batman in the director’s cut of the 2017 superhero movie.
In an interview with THR, Affleck explained that the original Justice League was an unpleasant experience that left him with a “monstrous taste” in his mouth.
“Justice League … You could teach a seminar on all the reasons why this is how not to do it. Ranging from production to bad decisions to horrible personal tragedy, and just ending with the most monstrous taste in my mouth,” Affleck said. “The genius, and the silver lining, is that Zack Snyder eventually went to AT&T and was like, ‘Look, I can get you four hours of content.’ And it’s principally just all the slow motion that he shot in black-and-white. And one day of shooting with me and him. He was like, ‘Do you want to come shoot in my backyard?’ I was like, ‘I think there are unions, Zack. I think we have to make a deal.’ But I went and did it. And now it is my highest-rated movie on IMDb.”
When asked if that rating was because of how intense Zack Snyder fans are, the actor and director explained that he went from being in a bomb to being in a retroactive hit.
“Say what you want, it is my highest-rated career movie,” Affleck stated. “I’ve never had one that went from nadir to pinnacle. Retroactively, it’s a hit. All of a sudden I was getting congratulated for the bomb I’m in.”
Zack Snyder’s Justice League was released in 2021 — nearly four years after the initial release of Justice League. This version of the movie was a director’s cut by Snyder that featured additional characters not seen in the theatrical cut and had a run time of just over four hours. In late 2022, director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran were made Co-CEOs of DC Studios, prompting a wide reshuffle of DC’s television and film projects.
