Until recently, Ben Affleck has been actively giving off the impression that his Batman movie—the one he’s directing and starring in—might not happen. To the casual observer, it seemed like Affleck was foreshadowing an eventual announcement that the project had either been canceled or that he had stepped down as director, two decision that would probably be met with a resounding cry of “it’s for the best.” However, last week he finally came clean and admitted to Jimmy Kimmel that he is making a Batman movie, it just had to take a backseat for a while to Live By Night.
Apparently, though, there’s another reason he’s been hesitant to talk about Batman lately: He’s just fucking sick of talking about Batman. Affleck teased something along those lines during the Kimmel interview, bemoaning the fact that nobody ever pestered him about Live By Night, but he lays out his frustrations in a much more direct manner in a clip from Entertainment Tonight Canada that a DC fan page shared on Twitter:
He complains that it’s “such a pain in the ass,” to constantly field Batman questions, as if the idea that people care about Batman is just a crushing burden for him. “Batman, Batman, Batman,” he says, mocking the obsessive tone of the annoying fans and press who are interested in hearing about the movie he’s getting millions of dollars to make. In the end, though, it’s not Batman that he’s frustrated with, it’s the pressure to create things as fast as possible. Considering how lousy Batman V Superman was, giving him time to “do it the right way” (as he says) is probably a good idea.