Ben Affleck has confirmed that he is not working on Warner Brothers superhero team adaptation Justice League. It had been previously reported that the actor/director was going to be approached by the studio to helm the film, but while speaking to Canadian site 24 Hours, he denied any involvement saying-
I’m not working on the Justice League. One of the problems with entertainment web sites is that they need to fill pages, and that’s how rumours get started.
Of course, the site then proceeded to try to generate some rumors of their own by parsing what Affleck said down to an almost Clintonian “What is your definition of the word ‘is’?” level. But I think that we can safely take him at his word here.
So if not Affleck, then who? How about the masterminds behind one of Warner’s biggest franchise earners, the Wachowskis? Moviehole is reporting that the studio is very happy with the team’s latest film, Cloud Atlas, and have placed them onto the Justice League director’s gig short list. The pair certainly showed that they could handle staging big sprawling action sequences between superpowered individuals in The Matrix films and their names are frequently brought up when fans discuss who would be good candidates to sit in the director’s chair for the film.
Moviehole does note, and I would agree with this analysis, that the Wachowskis like to work at their own pace, relatively free from suggestions that might be passed down from executives. That certainly doesn’t sound like the working conditions that someone directing a project that the studio is putting a lot of pressure on to succeed and launch a series of live action superhero franchises for them.
We’ll see if there is any substance to this story as time moves along. But, I have a feeling that we’re only being to play whack-a-mole with this, so hang in there.
