Aquaman 2 won’t have a Batman in it after all
Last year, almost exactly this time, news broke that Ben Affleck would be returning to Batman and his role as the Caped Crusader in James Wan’s Aquarius 2in other words Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Affleck said he was all done playing Batman in DC’s live-action movies in 2019 — he even had a farewell ceremony for his run as the character. He previously played Bruce Wayne in Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justiceand then reprized the role Justice League and appeared in the David Ayer edition of Suicide Squad.
But Jason Momoa took to Instagram in 2022 to reveal that Affleck would return as Batman in the Aquarius sequel, then scheduled for release in March 2023. Numerous schedule changes for both Aquarius 2 And The flash messed with that plan, and now The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that after several rounds of shooting, Batman is cut out Aquarius 2 whole.
That change is a little less surprising to people who did see it The flash when it finally hit theaters in June, after being repeatedly bumped from its original July 2022 release date. The flash soft-resets DC’s cinematic universe, with Michael Keaton first returning to the Batman role and then bringing in another guest star for a comedic cameo. release The flash for Aquarius 2 created a continuity problem: After Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) messes with the continuity of the universe, Ben Affleck is no longer Batman in his world. So how would he return to reprise the part Aquarius 2?
According to the THR report, the Aquarius 2 The Batman cameo originally featured Michael Keaton, shooting scenes for the role. When the release schedule changed and Aquarius 2 it looked like it would be released first, Affleck was brought in to recreate that cameo. With director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran taking over the DC movie universe, the decision was reportedly made to cut the cameo altogether to avoid confusion. “The latest cut of the film does not feature either version of the Dark Knight, according to sources, as new DC heads James Gunn and Peter Safran doesn’t want to promise a movie universe that won’t come to fruition, nor tie it too much to past failures,” reports THR.
There’s still time to change that again – Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is currently only scheduled for release in December 2023. But the most important thing for Gunn and Safran to lead was a new focus on strong leadership and decision-making in a company that kept shifting tactics around its films, moving away from a shared-universe vision for are superheroes to a series of unrelated one-off actions. And Gunn has been particularly vocal and specific about his plans for the new DC Universe. So we may have seen the last of Batfleck after all – at least until Aquarius 2 hits home video, and the deleted scenes begin leaking online.