Clooney played the superhero in 1997’s ‘Batman & Robin’
George Clooney has revealed that he once warned Ben Affleck against taking the role of Batman.
Clooney played the DC superhero himself in the 1997 film Batman & Robin, which also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, and has said the experience changed the way he approached his work.
That movie was not warmly received by critics, with the actor taking much of the heat from its naysayers. “Schwarzenegger was paid, I think, $25 million for that, which was like 20 times more than I was paid for it,” Clooney told The Hollywood Reporter. “We never even worked together! We worked together one day, but I took all the heat.”
He continued: “Now, fair deal – I was playing Batman and I wasn’t good in it and it wasn’t a good film, but what I learned from that failure was I had to rethink how I was working. Because now I wasn’t just an actor getting a role – I was being held responsible for the film itself.”
Clooney added that after working with Affleck on 2012’s Argo, he spoke to him about taking on the iconic role. “I said, ‘Don’t do it’,” he explained. “It was only from my experience, which is, you know…” However, he added that he thought Affleck “did great”.
Affleck played the Caped Crusader in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice and 2017’s Justice League. He was due to reprise the role in The Batman, which he was also signed on to write and direct. However, he is no longer involved with the film, which is due for release on June 25, 2021.
Speaking about his departure from the project earlier this year, Affleck said: “I tried to direct a version of it and worked with a really good screenwriter, but just couldn’t come up with a version – I couldn’t crack it. And so it was time to let someone take a shot at it. They’ve got some really good people.”
