According to Variety, Warner Brothers has their new Dark Knight – and it will be Ben Affleck. The “bomb in Phantoms yo” is to replace Christian Bale in the franchise, and will co-star alongside Henry Cavill as in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman crossover film slated as the direct sequel to Man Of Steel.

I’m surprised at this revelation. First off, I’ve never been able to picture Affleck as Bruce Wayne, much less Batman – his demeanor really doesn’t fit the characterization. That being said, Affleck has shown to be adaptable in some of his movies, so this might be an interesting result.

Casting on The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan‘s next project, titled Interstellar, is wrapping up.

The cast is already impressive, featuring the talents of Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, and of course, Sir Michael Caine. And now comes word of a handful of new actors who have signed on to appear as well.

It’s being reported that Ellen Burstyn, the Academy Award winner for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and five-time Oscar nominee for The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year, Resurrection, and Requiem for a Dream, as well as John Lithgow, the two-time Oscar nominee for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment and multiple Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner/nominee for his roles on Dexter and 3rd Rock from the Sun, are both joining Interstellar.

It’s good to see Warner Bros. and DC Comics finally starting to learn from their past mistakes in bringing their classic comic book superhero stable to the big screen. Outside of Christopher Nolan‘s Batman trilogy their future looked mighty bleak in the wake of the less-than-enthusiastic receptions given to Superman Returns and Green Lantern. Last week the long-in-the-works Man of Steel brought Superman back to the big screen to the tune of a record-smashing $128 million opening weekend despite mixed reviews. Warners/DC had been hedging their bets of Man of Steel being successful enough to begin constructing a long-running cinematic universe of multiple superhero movie franchises to rival Marvel Studios, with the end result being an all-star Justice League team-up film.

However, the Justice League movie has proved to be of even greater difficulty to get off the ground than the film adventure of any single DCU character. Gangster Squad scribe Will Beall took a crack at the project last year but his efforts were eventually discarded by the studio in favor of a fresh start overseen by David S. Goyer, the writer and hardcore comic fan who helped make Blade the first lucrative feature franchise out of a Marvel character and also co-wrote Batman Begins and wrote Man of Steel, as part of a three-picture deal that also includes a naturally inevitable Man of Steel sequel.

Man of Steel
Director: Zack Snyder
Screenwriter: David S. Goyer
Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Russell Crowe
Warner Bros. Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 143 Minutes
Release Date: June 14, 2013

Directed by Zack Snyder (Watchmen) and written by David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight Trilogy), Man of Steel stars Henry Cavill as Clark Kent a.k.a Superman a.k.a Kal-El, a Kryptonian sent to Earth by his parents as an infant to survive the destruction of his homeworld.

Raised with the values of his adoptive parents, Jonathan (Kevin Coster) and Martha (Diane Lane) Kent of Smallville, Kansas, Clark is alienated because of his unique gifts and struggles to find his own place in life. When the planet is attacked by hostile Kryptonians led by General Zod (Michael Shannon), Kal-El must embrace his destiny and be a symbol of hope for Earth and its people.

Snyder’s science-fiction drama begins on Krypton, where Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is aiding his wife Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer) in giving birth. Their son, Kal-El, is the first natural childbirth in centuries – an illegal, secret act of creation on a planet where children are engineered to serve specific roles in Kryptonian society. As the dying planet inches toward a cataclysmic extinction-level event, Jor-El and his wife place baby Kal-El in a spacecraft bearing the seal of the House of El (the “S” that becomes Superman’s iconic emblem) and send him to Earth, an ancient outpost Kryptonians visited tens of thousands of years ago.

People are excited about director Christopher Nolan‘s next film, Interstellar, without having seen anything from it yet. This is because Christopher Nolan has developed a bit of a reputation for creating awesomeness, starting with Memento (as well as Insomnia, for some) and the first movie in his take on Batman, Batman Begins, and then an impressive alternation between franchise and original work with The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises. His resume speaks for itself.

But something about Interstellar may have movie fans even more excited than the strong growing cast, which includes Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey as well as Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine. See Interstellar is a Paramount Pictures production, and Warner Brothers—who has been involved with all of Nolan’s films except Memento—wanted a piece of the action. Understandable, considering his last three movies have brought in nearly $3 BILLION. But in order to get involved, some goodies were going to have to be sent Paramount’s way.