Ben Affleck Reworks Animals to Explore Moral Complexity

Ben Affleck substantially reshaped his upcoming thriller Animals after shelving its original production plan, transforming a conventional kidnapping story into a more morally ambiguous examination of marriage and human behavior. The filmmaker ultimately took the lead role himself and incorporated artificial intelligence tools into post-production ahead of the film's Netflix release.

In an interview with TheWrap published October 9, 2026, Affleck explained that the project initially involved Matt Damon and Jennifer Garner in the starring roles, with Affleck directing but not appearing on screen. The film follows a Los Angeles mayoral candidate and his wife as they confront the kidnapping of their son.

Affleck abandoned the initial production plan several weeks before filming after learning that Spike Lee and Denzel Washington were developing a film with a similar premise, Apple's Highest 2 Lowest. He later revived Animals, but Damon had committed to starring in The Odyssey by then. Garner also withdrew from the wife's role, prompting Affleck to cast Kerry Washington.

Affleck had initially hoped to draw out qualities in his prospective leading actors that audiences had not frequently seen in their previous performances.

"some aspects of both of them that I know exist that they haven’t shown, frankly, in their work," Affleck told TheWrap when discussing the roles he had envisioned for Damon and Garner.

The filmmaker recalled his reaction to discovering the competing production.

"What do you mean there’s another movie with a similar plot in production and it’s being done by Spike Lee and Denzel Washington? These are not people with whom I’m interested in competing," Affleck recalled thinking.

After returning to the project, Affleck reconsidered the original script's characterization. He described its earlier approach as a contained thriller in which the mayor appeared more ineffective and his wife more virtuous, with both characters behaving according to familiar genre expectations.

"I really would rather tell something that feels more nuanced and honest," Affleck recalled thinking while reconsidering the screenplay.

He subsequently emphasized uncertainty in the characters' morality and the tension between private identity and public behavior. The kidnapping forces the couple to confront circumstances that challenge their established roles and expose their underlying motivations.

"The themes around marriage and the degree to which we are willing or capable of showing one another our total true selves, warts and all, is a really interesting question," Affleck said.

He also explored how an urgent crisis can expose the difference between a person's public presentation and private character.

"And the nature of morality as increasingly performative was exciting to dig into, then what happens when something so scary or urgent or desperate happens that the mask has to come off, and you’ve got to reckon with who am I really?" Affleck said.

For Affleck, maintaining uncertainty about the characters was central to the film's dramatic approach. He wanted viewers to reconsider their assessments as the story developed rather than anticipate predictable reactions.

"The world as it is is complicated and nuanced, and defies easy, convenient assignment of rules and expectations, and to reflect an idealized version of the world we live in is boring. That’s the real issue: You’re gonna bore the fucking audience if they already know what’s gonna happen and how people are gonna behave," he explained.

His approach was intended to keep audiences evaluating the characters throughout the film instead of settling on fixed judgments early in the story.

"Rather, I wanted to do a movie where my hope was that audiences would continue to need to calibrate how they were estimating, how they were judging, how they were considering the characters in the movie as it went along, and that seemed like a really exciting thing to do," Affleck said.

Beyond the screenplay, Animals also incorporates artificial intelligence technology developed by Interpositive, the company Affleck founded and sold to Netflix. According to TheWrap, Interpositive employees contributed to the production, and technology trained exclusively on inputs from the film was used during post-production.

Affleck said explaining the technology to collaborators, including Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, was straightforward because the intended applications were limited to specific filmmaking tasks.

"For one thing, it’s a deliberate and specific attempt to show ways in which this technology can be incorporated that not only doesn’t eliminate any jobs, but where we have some tools in post that sort of help us with challenges that are otherwise sometimes vexing. Whether it’s changing some lights or optics of a shot or doing some visual effects removals," he said.

He distinguished these targeted adjustments from systems that generate entirely artificial footage, emphasizing that the technology was intended to support decisions made by human artists during the finishing process.

"And I do want to distinguish this because I know people think of AI as a kind of a binary thing. There’s either no AI or you’re generating totally artificial material, and that’s just not the case. With this technology, with what we’re doing, it’s about where can it strategically help us adjust and tweak and enhance the experience of the audience when we get to finishing the movie, and in a way that has to be invisible and consistent with all the artist’s intention, and derived from the work of the human beings," Affleck said.

Affleck rejected claims that artificial intelligence could independently handle every aspect of filmmaking, comparing its potential role to earlier technological developments such as the introduction of sound and LED lighting.

During the interview, the filmmaker also described Animals as a talk-driven thriller-drama, explaining that he wanted to avoid creative restrictions that could prevent the story from presenting uncomfortable or provocative situations.

"Yeah, I think there come to be these maybe self-imposed sort of rules or sensibilities or this notion of like “Well, you can’t say this” or “You can’t do that.” I wanted to try to be free of some of that, because I thought it would, for one thing, feel more authentic to the audience, and for another, feel refreshing to be honest and provocative. If you’re trying to hold a mirror up to the world, it doesn’t really work if the world you’re reflecting is the idealized version of the world," Affleck said.

Animals marks Affleck's sixth feature film as a director and was scheduled to begin streaming on Netflix on October 9, 2026.