Ben Affleck Explained Why He Cast — And Then Recast — Jennifer Garner As His Wife In His Upcoming Movie, And I Know People Are Gonna Have A Lot Of Thoughts On This

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Ben Affleck is back in the director's chair, and he's got a new movie coming out next month: Animals.

Animals is about a Los Angeles mayoral candidate, named Mark Kimball, whose son's kidnapping derails his campaign. As well as directing and co-writing the film, Ben stars as Mark opposite Kerry Washington, who plays his wife.

And while the latest trailer shows off their incredible chemistry, it turns out that the husband-and-wife roles were initially intended for another very famous duo.

For context, the film was first announced way back in early 2024, at which point Ben's part in the movie was set to be played by his best pal, Matt Damon.

Now, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ben revealed that when it came to casting Mark's therapist wife, he turned to someone else from his inner circle: his very own ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, who he was married from 2005 to 2015.

Their divorce was finalized in 2018, and they share three children.

"I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role," he said, saying that the shared project would have been great for their co-parenting schedule. "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."

Singing Jen's praises, he continued: "She can bring something interesting that she hasn’t [done], that I kind of know she can do, that I don’t think she had a chance to do in one movie."

So, in 2024, Matt and Jennifer were locked into the lead roles, and they were ready to start filming. But, just two weeks out from shooting, Ben made the tough decision to pull the plug on Animals after he heard about another high-profile movie with a worryingly similar premise.

"We get very close to shooting, and then somebody said to me, 'Hey, you know, there’s this other movie that Spike [Lee] and Denzel [Washington] are doing that’s about a kidnapping,'" Ben recalled. "And I was like, 'Oh, shit.'" The film he's referring to is Highest 2 Lowest, which came out in August 2025, and starred Denzel as a music mogul whose son is taken by a kidnapper played by A$AP Rocky. (It was a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 crime thriller, High and Low, which Ben confessed he hasn't seen.)

"That freaked me out. We were two weeks from shooting, and I was like, 'We’re not doing it,'" he recalled. "It’s hard enough to make a good movie. You don’t need those kinds of headwinds."

If you've followed Ben's work, you'll know he's made and starred in several movies set in his home city of Boston, and with Animals, he'd become attached to the idea of making a movie about Los Angeles. "I realized I’d lived here longer than I’ve lived in Boston," he told EW. "I was like, God, this is really sticking with me, and I actually wanna do this."

Eventually, he decided it was time to revive the project, but this time, he'd be playing Mark himself, as he'd lost Matt to a little-known movie called The Odyssey, which began shooting in early 2025. "He chose a smaller director and a smaller film and a smaller role for his career, and I think he’s gonna suffer for it. He’ll regret this choice," Ben joked about the Christopher Nolan epic, which dominated theaters this summer. "A better actor had to play the part, naturally."

Despite the hiccups, it sounds like Jennifer remained on board; however, when it was confirmed that Ben would be taking Matt's place, they were forced to rethink the complications of two high-profile exes playing a married couple with a "pretty horrible dynamic." "I talked to Jen, and she was like, 'We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage,'" Ben said.

In the end, Ben replaced Jennifer with Kerry. Although, he's still hoping that he and Jen can work together in the future, on things other than co-parenting. "She’s fabulous, and we’re really good friends, and I’m profoundly grateful to her, and we have a great thing," he said of his ex. "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?"

I, for one, would love to see Ben and Jen share the screen once more. But I have no doubt that Kerry is going to kill it.

You can read the full Entertainment Weekly interview here. Animals is in select theaters and on Netflix October 9.

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