What would “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” have looked like with Ben Affleck directing? We’ll never know, but apparently, it could’ve happened. According to the actor, he turned down the idea, simply because he thought someone else could do it better.
The actor appeared on the latest episode of Josh Horowitz’s podcast “Happy Sad Confused,” in support of his new film “Animals,” and during the conversation, dug in on some of the projects that never were. Affleck confirmed that he never met with anyone about directing what became “Man of Steel,” but he was in the running for “Star Wars.”
“Yeah they came to me and asked me, and ‘Hey, are you interested in this?’ And I don’t know that that meant they weren’t also talking to JJ or other people, but I talked to those folks at the time,” Affleck recalled.
“And that was one where I just was like, again, I thought like, ‘Hey, I like ‘Star Wars’ and I’m a fan, but I’m not the person to direct this movie,’” he continued. “I just think someone else who has more passion for this is going to do a better job.”
Affleck immediately noted that he didn’t consider the move as “some great self-sacrificing thing.” He just wasn’t confident that he could make a great movie in that franchise, or help reinvent it, as they were doing with the sequel trilogy.
“A lot of challenges to reinventing that!” he said. “In fact, that you’ve seen played out. It hasn’t been easy for them to reinvent that franchise. Some have done really well, some — and you’ve got this whole fan base that’s got its own very strong opinions.”
“Yeah, it just was one that, like plenty of scripts that I’ve gotten as a director — I’ve certainly got better scripts as a as a director than as an actor that I’ve turned down — but I just thought like, ‘You know what? This would be — I don’t think I can do it as well as somebody else, and I don’t want to direct something that I don’t feel like I have a chance to be really really proud of.’”
You can watch Affleck’s full appearance on “Happy Sad Confused” in the video above.
The post Ben Affleck Explains Why He Took Himself Out of the Running to Direct ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ appeared first on TheWrap.
