Ben Affleck turned down directing Star Wars for a reason that should have ruled out Batman

After more than a decade of polite dodging, Ben Affleck has confirmed that Lucasfilm asked him to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and that he said no. He told Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, in an interview that did the rounds on 12 October 2026, that he never even knew whether the studio was talking to J.J. Abrams at the same time. He only knew he wasn't the man for it.

"I just think someone else who has more passion for this is going to do a better job. And that's not like some great self-sacrificing thing, because I thought I don't know that I can make a great version of Star Wars or reinvent this."

— Ben Affleck, on Happy Sad Confused

He calls himself a fan, just not the right director. And he named the other problem out loud: Star Wars audiences come with "very strong opinions", and looking back, he reckons reinventing the franchise has been hard going even for Lucasfilm.

The job he said no to

The offer landed when Affleck was the hottest director in town, with Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo behind him, which is why a Boston crime filmmaker on the Star Wars shortlist wasn't as random as it sounds.

• January 2013: reports name Abrams as director of Episode VII. The same ABC News report lists Affleck as high on Disney's wish list.
• February 2013: Argo wins Best Picture, with Affleck collecting the Oscar as one of its producers.
• August 2013: Warner Bros. announces him as Batman in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel follow-up.
• December 2015: The Force Awakens opens and finishes on $2.07 billion worldwide.
• Summer 2016: asked by Bill Simmons whether he had passed on the job, Affleck says it "wouldn't be polite to talk about the jobs you turned down".
• October 2026: he finally talks about it.

Fans on r/StarWars have their own version, and the top comment in the thread claims "about half of Hollywood" got the call: Christopher McQuarrie, Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Vaughn. That list is fan lore rather than confirmed fact, though Fincher's meeting with Kathleen Kennedy and del Toro's polite no have both been reported before. Abrams, in this telling, was simply the one who said yes.

From one fandom to another

Here is the cheeky part. Affleck stepped back from a franchise because its fans had very strong opinions, and a few months later signed up for the one fanbase that might be louder. The Batman announcement in August 2013 set off a proper backlash, with plenty of people bringing up his 2003 Daredevil as evidence for the prosecution.

He turned down Star Wars because of its fans, then walked straight into Gotham's.

He got the full package: a franchise, a cape and a decade of online arguments. How Justice League ended for him, he has already described as the low point of his career. The Force Awakens, meanwhile, made its $2 billion without him.

Read more: Snyder fans always blamed Warner Bros. for Justice League — now Ben Affleck says they were right

To be fair, he hasn't sworn off comic-book films entirely. In the same conversation, Horowitz asked whether Kevin Feige had been in touch about a return as Daredevil. Affleck said he has mostly lost interest in superhero films, but would make an exception for the Marvel boss: "Of all the producers in the world who have, like, sort of pretended to kind of know what the audience wants, the only guy I would ever believe is Kevin Feige."

Has Feige called? "He hasn't. I wish he would."

With Avengers: Doomsday due in December, the multiverse door is open. Thirteen years after Lucasfilm rang him, the director who said no to Star Wars is the one waiting by the phone.

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