Affleck directs Ray Fisher in Animals

Batman and Cyborg are in the same movie again. Animals, the thriller that Ben Affleck wrote, directed and stars in, arrives on Netflix and in select theaters on October 9th. And in the cast is Ray Fisher, Victor Stone from Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

For those who have just arrived: Affleck was the Batman of the SnyderVerse, from Batman vs Superman, in 2016, until the Snyder Cut, in 2021. Fisher played Cyborg and was one of the voices in the campaign for Warner to release Snyder’s version. He joined the cast of Animals in March 2025, according to Deadline.

The story is heavy. Affleck plays a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles whose son is kidnapped in the middle of the campaign, and he and his wife, played by Kerry Washington, go to extreme measures to pay the ransom. The cast also includes Gillian Anderson and Steven Yeun, the photography is by Robert Elswit, from Blood, and the producer is Artists Equity, Affleck’s company with Matt Damon. It is the first film he has directed since 2023’s Air.

But this week the film became a topic for another reason. On Wednesday, the 30th, at a Bloomberg event, Affleck said that he used artificial intelligence for a lot of things in Animals. Where, he doesn’t say. And he explained why.

It’s sort of like if you went to a magic show and the magician walked out and said, ‘Just before I start, I want you to know there’s another bunny under here.’ … You know, it’s sort of ruined, right?

Ben Affleck at Bloomberg’s Screentime event, 09/30/2026, according to Hollywood Reporter

There’s context there. This year, Netflix bought InterPositive, an AI tools company for filmmakers that Affleck founded, for almost 600 million dollars. At the same event he said that he doesn’t believe that AI will let someone type in a request and come out with a film that people want to see, and that Animals is a very human film.

For us, what matters is something else. Five years after the Snyder Cut, Batman and Cyborg once again share a film, now with Affleck at the helm. On the 9th we’ll check.