With the release of “The Tender Bar” shortly, Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Affleck has been giving interviews and discussing all sorts of things from his divorce to his issues with alcohol to his past performances.
When it comes to movies, Affleck has a lot to say starting with a long answer he gave to a question by THR during the film’s premiere. Affleck touched upon the disastrous box-office performance of Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel” which he co-wrote and has a supporting role in.
He says he sees its failure not due to it being a bad film, something he’s had experience with before and the movie’s good critical reviews back him up on that assessment. Rather it’s more about a large-scale shift in the attitude of audiences:
“This is more due to a seismic shift that I’m seeing, and I’m having this conversation with every single person I know. Though there are various iterations, the conversation is the same: How is [the movie business] changing?
One of the fundamental ways it’s changing is that the people who want to see complicated, adult, non-IP dramas are the same people who are saying to themselves, ‘You know what? I don’t need to go out to a movie theater because I’d like to pause it, go to the bathroom, finish it tomorrow.’
It’s that, along with the fact that you can watch with good quality at home. It’s not like when I was a kid and the TV at home was an 11-inch black-and-white TV. I mean, you can get a 65-inch TV at Walmart for $130. There’s good quality out there and people are at home streaming in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. It’s all changed.”
As a result, he says “The Last Duel” could well end up being the last film he does that gets a major theatrical release because he’s done with franchise filmmaking:
“That’s probably the last theatrical release I’ll have because I don’t want to do IP movies where you have this sort of built-in audience. That’s something I was interested in and liked, and I just don’t like anymore. I like other people who do it. And if you are going to do it, you should love it. And I love something different. So, I want to do that.”
Affleck also appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week and discussed his final outing as Batman in the upcoming “The Flash” movie.
That movie features both Affleck and Michael Keaton as alternative versions of Batman, so Kimmel asked if George Clooney also pops up in the film as well to which Affleck responded:
“If he is, he hasn’t told me. It’s possible. [Clooney] may be very guarded. As far as I know, he doesn’t want to return to that level height of cowl ears. But I don’t believe he’s in the ‘Flash’ movie. But then again, I didn’t even see Michael Keaton, so maybe [Clooney] is there?”
The comment would indeed seem to confirm Affleck and Keaton do not share scenes in the new film which opens in November next year.
