Although Warner Bros. appears eager for another Batman film, even confirming a 2018 release just last week, director and co-writer Ben Affleck remains adamant that he's in no rush to finish the script if it means sacrificing quality.

"I'm still working on the script," he said in a brief interview for Entertainment Weekly's Best of 2016 issue. "I'm not going to write and direct anything that I don't think is good enough to be made. I'm definitely going to make sure I have something that is special -- there's not enough money in the world to make a mediocre version of Batman worth it."

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Affleck, who's writing the film with Geoff Johns, has made similar assertions before, but perhaps not in such stark terms. The actor and filmmaker, who of course will also star in the Batman solo movie, has repeatedly attempted to temper the building frenzy around the project -- from both fans and studio executives -- even while expressing his own excitement.

Just last week he was quoted as saying, "I’m a real believer in not reverse engineering projects to meet a window or a date. So, that’s what we’re doing. [...] I’m really mindful of that. I’m not in any hurry to jam a mediocre film down the pipe.”

He told journalists during a June set visit to the set of Zack Snyder's "Justice League" that he wasn’t completely satisfied yet with the Batman script, explaining he has “the highest of standards” for the project. “That’s something that would have to pass a very high bar for me,” Affleck said. “It’s not just, ‘Yeah, that might be fun, let’s go try this out.’”

And when entertainment sites pounced on his apparent announcement in October of "The Batman" as the film's title, Affleck was quick to walk that back, saying, "There is no Batman movie happening yet, we’re still trying to figure it out, you know, get the script and budget and all that stuff. And someone said, ‘What are you calling it?’ and I had said, like, back when we were promoting another movie, I was like, ‘We don’t have a name for it, we’re just going with The Batman or Batman movie,’ and I said that, and everyone was like ‘Affleck announces the name of his Batman movie.'”

However, some two months later, there's at least some degree of certainty that a Batman movie is happening, with Affleck himself acknowledging what pretty much everyone else already knew: that the film will start production in spring 2017.

Affleck will be joined by Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon and Joe Manganiello as Deathstroke.

(via CosmicBookNews)