Whenever a comic-book adaptation comes along, there’s always the question of whether it’ll be a panel-to-screen translation, or whether it will adapt the spirit, not the actual book. And Ben Affleck, currently working on a Batman solo movie, appears to fall more in the latter camp.
Back in March, Affleck spoke with journalists in Argentina and noted he’d “borrow” from the comics, but any Batman movie he makes will be an original story:
…in some ways what Zack did with this movie, which is to borrow certain things from the great comic books, but create an original story around it because I wouldn’t want the fans to already know the story and be familiar, but I would borrow, steal, great things that have been done before in the comics.
This isn’t much of a surprise; few recent comic-book movies have been straight adaptations from the comics, although Batman V. Superman did take ideas from a few major arcs, most notably The Dark Knight Returns and The Death Of Superman, and even adapted a short sequence from the former to the screen during Batman’s rescue of Martha Kent. That said, in terms of the spirit of the book, Affleck is co-writing the movie with DC’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns, a longtime DC writer who knows his way around Batman. And the two seem to get along well, which is promising. Now the only question is whether Batman vapes in this version of the story.
(Via Blastr)
