Kevin Smith’s career kicked off with Clerks in 1994, and the director went on to make more comedies, many of which starred Ben Affleck. The two worked together on Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and more until they had a falling out. After not speaking for ten years, they reunited when Affleck made a cameo in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot in 2019. Since then, Smith has shared lots of fun stories about the actor. In fact, he recently spoke to Yahoo! Entertainment about writing a Superman movie for Affleck back in the ’90s, long before the actor became Daredevil or Batman. At the time, Warner Bros. was in development on a new Superman film titled Superman Reborn, but Smith thought the script was “terrible,” so he pitched his own movie based on The Death of Superman comic series. However, Smith wanted Affleck to play the lead while producer Jon Peters wanted Sean Penn.
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“I was writing it for Affleck,” Smith shared. “Ben was heating up. Like he was there. I think he’d been hired for Armageddon. Affleck, he’s a f*cking giant, like he’s built like a superhero, built like a giant action figure, particularly with the height. And then he puts on the muscles there too. So in my head and heart, it was always Ben and Michael Rooker [as Lex Luther].”
“[Jon Peters] goes, ‘Look in [Penn’s] eyes in [Deam Man Walking], he’s [got] haunted eyes, the eyes of a killer,’” Smith explained. “And I was like, ‘Dude, it’s Superman. You know, that’s not how most people think of Superman’… But he wanted to reinvent it. He wanted something gritty, graphic, and grown-up. He essentially wanted like what Zack Snyder eventually did [in Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League].”
While Smith and Affleck never got to make a Superman movie, their days of collaborating may not be over. ComicBook.com spoke with Smith in 2020, and he revealed that Affleck wants more than a cameo in Smith’s Twilight of the Mallrats.
“[Ben Affleck] cameo-ed in Reboot, far more than a cameo, but we were texting, and I was just like … He had mentioned Mallrats because he mentioned his oldest daughter makes fun of him for Mallrats because of how he’s dressed in the movie… She’s like, ‘Where’d you get those clothes?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ So I was like, ‘Well, you’ll be able to tell her that you’re in the next Mallrats if you want to come out and cameo.’ And he was like, ‘She likes it too much. Better be more than one scene cameo, dude. Put me in a lot.’ I said, ‘All right, done and done.’”
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