Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck will try to reactivate his Argo mojo with Live By Night, a new prestige-y gangster picture coming to theaters very late in December (and expanding wider in 2017). Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (who also wrote the source for Affleck’s first directorial effort, Gone Baby Gone), the film stars Affleck, who also directed and penned the screenplay, as the son of a Boston police captain who ventures into a life of crime. The cast also includes Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, and Sienna Miller. Here’s the official synopsis:

We don’t know much about Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie, save for its blessedly punctuation-free title and the fact that Affleck and Deathstroke will be in it, and with all the work being done on Wonder Woman and Justice League, The Batman is probably pretty far on the back burner right now. But plans are still being set in motion, and our latest Alfred, Jeremy Irons, says that the movie will start production as soon as next summer.

Ben Affleck is a man of many talents: A-list movie star, director, producer, Matt Damon’s BFF, Batman, vape enthusiast, and this week he’s an autistic accountant moonlighting as an action-hero in The Accountant. But there’s just one skill he can’t seem to master, and it’s knowing what to do with his face in movie posters. Like Adam Sandler, who makes the same face in every single poster, Affleck also has a very specific default facial expression: Blankly staring off into the distance.

Hollywood is so obsessed with superheroes these days they made a superhero movie about an accountant. It’s called The Accountant, and it is indeed about a guy who prepares people’s taxes, looks for deductions, and monitors financial records for fraud. But in his off-hours, this guy is also a master martial artist and a sniper capable of hitting targets a mile away. He also has a secret identity and what amounts to a low-rent Batcave, an Airstream trailer full of weapons and cash, stashed in a storage unit. He’s played by former Daredevil and current Batman Ben Affleck. He doesn’t wear a cape, but he might as well.

Everyone knows that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon collaborated on Good Will Hunting, and the film launched both of them to stardom and their first Oscar wins. But did you know that Damon and Affleck have been friends since elementary school, when they both attended Cambridge Alternative Public School? They often met during lunch to talk about how they would both become actors, and even worked as ushers in movie theaters when they were kids. That’s just one of the Ben Affleck facts featured in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was a tale of two heroes and a tale of two outcomes. The film made $873 million worldwide. But it was also a deeply polarizing film, satisfying many hardcore DC fans but putting off others with its dark tone and heroes that I would characterize as, how should I put this, kinda dumb. It will lead directly into the Wonder Woman and Justice League movies, along with an entire DC Extended Universe, but the film was so dark and dour, that it made a lot of viewers less excited than nervous about all the stuff to come.

We finally know what Ben Affleck‘s solo Batman movie will be called, and thank the superhero gods, it won’t have a colon or a subtitle.

It’s been a big year for Ben Affleck, who put on the black cape in both Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad this summer, but the later part of this year will see him sink his teeth into more understated, non-superhero roles. He’ll make math thrilling in The Accountant in October, and after that he’ll venture down into the gangster underworld of the 1920s in Live By Night, which is looking like an awards season contender now that its wide release date has been moved up to January 2018.

There were a lot of rumors about perennial DC Comics bad guys Deathstroke the Terminator showing up in Suicide Squad. He’s gonna be in the movie! (He wasn’t.) He’s gonna be a hired assassin competing with the Suicide Squad! (He didn’t.) He’s the breakout character in the movie! (He wasn’t.) Scott Eastwood’s gonna play him! (He didn’t.) So, so many stories about this character who wound up not being in the movie at all, in any way.

These famous couples discovered romance on set, and it lasted well after they shot their last scenes together.