Ben Affleck may be best known to an entire generation as the DCEU’s Batman, but the actor-director is also no stranger to the thriller genre. The Oscar winner previously directed and starred in the 2010 crime drama The Town and, most recently, featured in the 2026 Netflix thriller The Rip alongside Matt Damon. Now, Affleck returns to the fictional crime world with his latest directorial and co-writing effort, a project that will be markedly different from the movie he initially planned to make.
The filmmaker’s latest feature, Animals, will arrive on Netflix this fall. Affleck directs and stars in the film, which endured a rocky pre-production period before cameras started rolling. It was initially set to star an actor Affleck has famously worked with multiple times in the past, but a series of unrelated circumstances led to Affleck stepping into the lead role himself – and recasting his lead actress.
In Affleck’s original vision for Animals, the actor’s real-life best friend and frequent collaborator Matt Damon was set to star as Mark Kimball, a candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Affleck, at the time only set to direct and co-write the film, had secured his ex-wife Jennifer Garner to play Mark’s wife, Abigail. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Affleck explained why he thought Garner would be an “amazing” choice for the film:
“I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role. It also has the added benefit of, like, both of us will see our kids more because we do a week and a week and back and forth. I thought, well, we can coordinate our schedules around it.”
The actor added that he thought the Alias star could “bring something interesting that she hasn’t [done], and I kind of know she can do, that I don’t think she had a chance to do in one movie.”
However, due to scheduling conflicts and a thematically similar Spike Lee and Denzel Washington film in production just two weeks before Animals was set to start filming, Affleck pushed back the film’s production. Several months later, he resumed work on the film, but by that point, Damon had signed on to star in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster epic, The Odyssey.
With Damon now unavailable to play Mark Kimball, Affleck decided to step into the shoes of the southern California politician. That meant Affleck and Garner, who famously married and then went through a high-profile divorce, would play a married couple with a deteriorating relationship. Both actors decided their real-life history would add too much baggage to the film. Affleck recounted Garner’s decision to exit the project to EW:
“I talked to Jen, and she was like, ‘We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage.’ … I would love to work with her, frankly. She’s fabulous, and we’re really good friends, and I’m profoundly grateful to her, and we have a great thing. I still would wanna work with her in the future, but what you don’t wanna do is take the audience’s baggage and have it work against you, you know?”
Garner’s exit marked an opportunity for another well-known actor to take her place. Emmy-nominated Scandal actress Kerry Washington, no stranger to political dramas, joined the project and reshaped the role in the process. Affleck and Washington added new depth to Mark and Abigail’s relationship, incorporating their existence as an interracial couple into Animals and creating new dynamics that weren’t present in the earlier version of the film.
In Animals, Mark’s campaign to become Los Angeles’ mayor is rocked when his and Abigail’s son is kidnapped. The couple is then forced to come up with the money for a ransom while attempting to keep buried secrets from coming out. In addition to Affleck and Washington, the R-rated thriller also stars Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, and Ray Fisher.
- Release Date
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October 9, 2026
- Runtime
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106 minutes
