"Oh sh*t, we have a problem!"—Ben Affleck says DC movies aged out of their audience as his son found them too scary

In a recent cover story for GQ Magazine, Ben Affleck looked back on what went wrong with DC movies. Affleck played the role of the Dark Knight in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and reprised the role in the films Justice League and The Flash.

Despite having a good time playing Batman, Affleck discussed the reason behind DC Movies heading in the wrong direction,

"I had a really good time. I loved doing the Batman movie. I loved Batman v Superman. And I liked my brief stints on The Flash that I did and when I got to work with Viola Davis on Suicide Squad for a day or two."

When it came to creativity, Ben liked the idea and the ambition he had for it. He then went on to add,

"What happened was it started to skew too old for a big part of the audience. Like even my own son at the time was too scared to watch the movie. When I saw that I was like, 'Oh s***, we have problem."

Ben's last few appearances as Batman were in Justice League in 2021 and in The Flash in 2023, and then Robert Pattinson stepped in as the new Batman.

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Ben Affleck on Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. butting heads

While mentioning that his own son was "too scared" to watch the DC movies, Ben Affleck detailed that while filmmaker Zack Snyder wanted to continue down with the heavy scenes, the entertainment studio behind the franchise, Warner Bros., wished to target the younger audience.

"You had a filmmaker that wanted to continue down that road and a studio that wanted to recapture all the younger audience at cross purposes. Then you have two entities, two people really wanting to do something different and that is a really bad recipe."

In September 2024, while speaking to Entertainment Weekly's Matt Damon, Ben Affleck mentioned that he was not happy with Justice League.

"I had a really nadir experience around Justice League for a lot of different reasons. Not blaming anybody, there’s a lot of things that happened. But really what it was is that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like being there. I didn’t think it was interesting."

In another interview with The New York Times, Ben revealed one of his friends influenced his decision to step away from the Batman role. He showed his friend the Batman script, and while the friend liked the script, he also noted that the actor would "drink yourself to death if you go through what you just went through again."