Ben Affleck to Star in George Clooney’s Next Movie ‘The Tender Bar’

Ben Affleck is in negotiations to star in George Clooney’s next film The Tender Bar. Set up at Amazon Studios, the film is based on J.R. Moehringer’s bestselling memoir, which recollected the time he spent searching for unlikely father figures among the patrons at his uncle’s bar in Long Island.

It’s unclear whether Clooney plans to act in the film himself, but he has starred in every film he has directed with the exception of Suburbicon, where he entrusted the lead to his Ocean’s 11 pal Matt Damon. I thought Clooney might play the role Affleck is tackling, but Affleck makes a bit more sense for it seeing as how he’s 11 years younger. Perhaps Clooney will turn up elsewhere, or perhaps not. Either way, two Batman actors working together is always cause for celebration ’round these parts!

Oscar-winning scribe William Monahan (The Departed) will adapt Moehringer’s memoir, and Clooney will produce the film with his Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov as well as former Amazon exec Ted Hope. Amazon acquired the project out of turnaround from Sony, which had been developing the film with Hidden Figures director Ted Melfi.

Affleck is coming off a fantastic turn in The Way Back that plays on his own image. Warner Bros. will mount an awards campaign for the performance, which is far more deserving than most of the media’s presumed top contenders this season. Next up for Affleck is the steamy thriller Deep Water and Ridley Scott’s provocative period piece The Last Duel, not to mention Zack Snyder’s Justice League. As a director, he’s prepping The Big Goodbye, which follows the making of Chinatown.

Clooney and Affleck previously worked together on Argo, for which they shared the Oscar for Best Picture with Heslov. Clooney’s next film, The Midnight Sky, is a post-apocalyptic thriller in which he plays a lonely scientist in the Arctic who tries to stop a team of astronauts led by Felicity Jones from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe. That movie will debut on Netflix later this month, and you can click here to watch the trailer.