UPDATE: Speaking to fans and press at the official Warner Bros SDCC presentation for the DCEU movies, Affleck affirmed that he is still playing Batman. Alluding only in general to the rumors in question, he described himself as "the luckiest guy in the world" to have the role, that he looked forward to working with Matt Reeves on The Batman and that he had the support of two high-ranking Warner Bros officials in remaining attached to the role. Notable, however, was that none of his statements actually contradict the actual narrative of the rumors - which held that his participation in future films was uncertain and that the studio was already planning what to do if/when he departed.
(Original story below)
"Flux" is probably best describes the state of the DC Extended Universe on film at this point. Launched as an ambitious challenger to the (by then) solidly-established Marvel Cinematic Universe, the brand can today count Patty Jenkins' smash-hit Wonder Woman and it's slate of CW TV series as outright success stories; while lower-than-expected box-office takes and brutally-negative reviews have been a big part of the narrative for Man of Steel, Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad.
Justice League - the film all of this has been building to - had to be retooled amid the fallout from studio execs being utterly blindsided by the audience rejection of Batman V Superman and (we've since learned) was rocked by the a tragic death in the family of director/producer team Zack and Deborah Snyder's family. The film is now undergoing reshoots under new director Joss Whedon, with many questioning how long this has actually been the case since Whedon has been involved behind the scenes for some time now.
Now, after successive announcements that he would no longer direct the solo film The Batman and that new director Matt Reeves (late of this Summer's Spider-Man-toppling hit War For the Planet of the Apes) would be abandoning the original script and starting from scratch comes word of another potentially major shakeup: THR reports that Ben Affleck is rumored to be on his way out of his contract as Bruce Wayne/Batman; with the actor angling to stage an amicable exit and the studio said to be exploring their options for a possible recasting.
BATFLEXIT?
If this is indeed the case (all eyes will now certainly be on Warner Bros SDCC panel a few hours from now for clarification), it would be a gigantic story in the film industry - but not necessarily a surprising one. As the dramatic realignment of Warners' plans has come more clearly into focus, a pattern has begun to emerge that looks less like the chaos of the early days following Batman V Superman's divisive reception and more like damage-control via a controlled drip of information; with big decisions being made largely behind the scenes and announced much later with leaks (mostly) at a minimum.
Despite pop-culture legends of erratic studio heads and quick-cut decisions, big moves associated with billion-dollar multimedia franchises don't come together overnight. To use the most relevant example: Whedon coming onboard to "finish" Justice League was a deal all but certainly months in the making (possibly going all the way back to his "surprise" attachment to a previously unscheduled Batgirl project) by the time it was announced. In other words, if (and to be certain, that's a big, big "if") Affleck is indeed out of his Batman gig, he'll have been out of it (on paper) for awhile by the time fans hear about it.
And while it would be an extreme move in any context, the signs that this could indeed be the case are fairly plentiful (if also mightily subjective): While Affleck's Batman has plenty of cameo time in Suicide Squad (shot prior to the negative BvS reception) he doesn't show up in the framing scenes of Wonder Woman even though "Wayne Enterprises" very much does - despite BvS suggesting the characters as a potential couple and widespread (though, it must be noted, ultimately erroneous) early questions as to whether or not a female-fronted superhero film starring the mostly-unknown Gal Gadot could open on its own. As noted previously, Affleck had already given up the directors chair on The Batman solo feature to Matt Reeves, now word has come down that the new director has thrown out the original script that Affleck and his writing partner Chris Terrio had largely worked up. Even Justice League 2 - at one point intended to be a concurrent shoot with the first film - doesn't have much set in stone about it anymore (not even a director), so Affleck isn't known to have shot any scenes for it (although he is still contracted to appear).
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CHANGE OF KNIGHT
In other words: Assuming he hasn't also shot scenes for Aquaman (the only other DCEU movie rolling cameras at the moment), if the actor has indeed stepped aside the key machinery is already in place for a "soft reboot" of the character with a new actor turning up in Reeves' reworked The Batman and then re-integrating into the broader team/universe by stepping directly into Affleck's spot in Justice League 2 (current fan theories about the character being "killed off" and replaced in one way or another in a "Final Crisis" scenario are, one supposes, plausible but unlikely). The obvious comparison would be Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as Bruce Banner between The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers - the substantive difference here being that there was no solo Ruffalo Hulk movie between the two appearances and none of the Avengers had interacted with Norton's Banner onscreen.
Despite instantly being easily one of the biggest entertainment stories of the year, what this would mean for Affleck (barring any unknown factors that could have contributed to the prospective decision i.e. health, career change, personal matters, etc) is pretty straightforward: An actor closing in on his 50th birthday, who had previously been very much in the process of transitioning to a behind-the-camera career focus, would have changed his mind about spending a decade or more in a physically-demanding, time-consuming commitment to a franchise that thus far has only produced one positively-received movie - not exactly a huge shock. Every actor in Hollywood ("serious" or otherwise) wants a franchise superhero role to underwrite their less financially-guaranteed choices, but Affleck may already have a less labor-intensive alternative to Batman with his autistic-assassin sleeper hit The Accountant having already been greenlit for a sequel.
The implications for Justice League, on the other hand, are bigger and farther reaching. Assuming for a moment that, if Affleck is out, this departure becomes a known fact before League has opened; it would laser-focus audience and critical attention on not only his performance but the question of whether or not the film has been "arranged" around making his exit feel somehow more natural. But even if there's "no smoke" in that regard, an overhanging fact of it being the early swan-song for "Batfleck" in popular culture would do more than anything to cement the increasingly likely-feeling idea that the DCEU as (largely) envisioned by Zack Snyder and the circa-2014 Warners' brass has been low-key scrapped; with post-League features heading off in fresh new direction - perhaps inspired more by the runaway success of the more upbeat Wonder Woman.
ZERO HOUR
That would leave Justice League itself looking like the most expensive "dump release" (read: a film the studio has already pre-planned, in bookkeeping terms, to take a financial loss or critical-drubbing on - think Fox's 2015 Fantastic Four) in recent Hollywood history - a fascinating example of how much the "Cinematic Universe" franchise model has changed the game i.e. a studio releasing a movie that "everybody knows" is hugely troubled (two directors, massive reshoots, multiple re-toolings and now one major star pre-emptively bailing on sequels) because its presence is none the less necessary to set the stage for a run of future films already in motion. There's some broad precedent for that in Universal openly stating that Dracula: Untold's box office would decide whether or not it was the "real" beginning of what's now called the Dark Universe franchise, but there would never have been anything on this scale before.
In the end, all of this is somewhat academic: Warner Bros is expected to make a big push for Justice League and the broader DCEU in a few hours in a major press presentation at SDCC. If Affleck is out, it's conceivable that it would be announced there - though unlikely, given that it would all but certainly cast a negative shadow over anything else at what's intended to be the studio's triumphant post-Wonder Woman return to Hall H. The most likely scenario remains that Affleck has NOT left the franchise, followed by the less likely but at least plausible scenario where his exit has been agreed upon but won't be officially announced until a new actor has been selected - in either case, it would be highly unlikely we'd be hearing about it on Comic-Con weekend unless a major leak had forced the studio's hand (again: the overwhelmingly more likely answer here is that nothing is actually going on).
Even still, what the whole proceeding demonstrates is that Hollywood is still figuring out how to orient itself in a new era where individual films are expected to be part of interlocking narrative machinery planned out years in advance but still susceptible to chaos unleashed by the all-too-human nature of the people making and starring in them: A personal tragedy can scuttle an entire crossover, a dissatisfied actor can change plans across a dozen films at once, one unexpected box-office dud can ripple across an entire slate. The "universe" of DC Comics is obsessed by the entire of recurring "Crises" that can shake the foundations of entire realities - now, the movie versions may need to become similarly acquainted.
