Ben Affleck to replace Matt Damon as the star of Netflix thriller ‘Animals’
Ben Affleck has replaced Matt Damon as the star of the upcoming Netflix thriller Animals after his pal was forced to drop out of the project.
The original plan was for Affleck to direct the film and Damon to star. However, scheduling conflicts with Damon’s role in Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey threw a significant spanner in the works. A holdup with the rights to the Animals screenplay – written by Connor McIntyre and Billy Ray – pushed the Los Angeles production of the film back to April 2025. By then, The Odyssey will have already begun shooting in February in various far-flung locations across the globe.
Though Damon won’t star in the movie anymore, he’s staying on as producer with Affleck through their production company, Artists Equity. The pair had already shot another Netflix thriller, RIP, directed by Joe Carnahan and produced by Artists Equity, so Affleck reportedly saw an opportunity to fast-track the Animals production by committing to starring as well as directing.
The rest of the Animals cast is expected to be announced soon, with the only one currently announced being Gillian Anderson (Sex Education, The X-Files). The film, reportedly about a mayoral candidate whose child is kidnapped, will be Affleck’s sixth effort as a director. His most recent was 2023’s Air, a sports drama about the creation of the Air Jordan sneaker, but his most significant success was 2012’s Argo, which won ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy Awards.
Fascinatingly, Air was the first time Affleck had directed his longtime friend Damon, and he admitted during a Variety‘s Directors on Directors conversation that he was intimidated by the list of directors his pal had worked with. “Before we were shooting, I was like, ‘Matt has worked with Spielberg, Scorsese, the Coen brothers.’ So now in his mind, he’s going to kind of be holding me up against these other experiences.”
“I remember the cinematographer, Bob Richardson, came over to me after the third or fourth day,” Affleck continued. “He was like, ‘I think Matt trusts you now.’ I was like, ‘I think so, too.’ I felt a professional kind of respect there that actually meant a lot to me.”