BEN AFFLECK IN “LIVE BY NIGHT”

Press release

BEN AFFLECK, A GANGSTER WITH A CONSCIENCE IN “LIVE BY NIGHT”

Two-time Academy Award-winner Ben Affleck – most recently seen in the critically praised The Accountant and in early 2016 playing crime fighting icon Batman/Bruce Wayne in the global blockbuster Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – now directs and stars in Warner Bros. Pictures' new gangster film Live by Night.

Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Affleck plays Joe Coughlin who went overseas to fight valiantly for his country, but quickly found himself utterly disillusioned by the war. He ultimately finds himself back home in, as he tells us, a life he didn’t expect…paying the price for the American dream.

“Joe fully acknowledges that he’s chosen to be an outlaw in a town run by gangsters, with the Irish and Italian mobs at war,” offers Affleck. “What I find most intriguing about him though is that, while he breaks the law and makes his own rules, it’s his own morality that prevents him from considering himself one of them, a gangster.”

But it’s Joe’s inherent sense of decency that could be his undoing.

For the ten years following the war, Joe Coughlin managed to live like an outlaw—under his policeman father’s roof, no less—before it all caught up to him. “The things that Joe witnessed as a soldier made him decide there wasn’t any meaning to the rules we follow in life, to playing it straight,” Affleck states. “He even sees the organized hierarchical nature of the gangster life as an equal anathema to the hierarchy of the military. He wants no part of that, no part of taking orders from anybody. He’s going to make his own rules.”

And he does so with a fair amount of success, so long as he keeps it, as Affleck describes, “small-time, running around with just two other guys and doing little stick-ups, that kind of thing.”

But it isn’t Joe’s distaste for authority, or even an ill-chosen robbery, that causes him to make his gravest error. It’s love. And it’s that singular emotion in its many forms—from passion to compassion—that will continue to be his downfall for years to come.

Live by Night was a true passion project for Affleck, who says, “As a filmmaker, this was a chance to pay homage to the classic Warner Bros. gangster movies of the 1930s through the `70s. I grew up watching them and they had an epic, sprawling feel that really took you into a different world, a different era.”

Affleck adapted the screenplay from author Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name; the two first collaborated when Affleck made his acclaimed directorial debut with his screen adaptation of Lehane’s crime thriller Gone, Baby, Gone. Lehane served as an executive producer on Live by Night.

As a lifelong film buff, Affleck posits that the story has all the tropes that made him a fan of the gangster genre in particular: beautiful women, dangerous men, cops, the mob, shootouts, car chases…the whole fiery, combustible mix. “As soon as I read Dennis’s book I knew that there was something there for anyone who just really likes to have a great time at the movies.”

Opening across the Philippines on January 18, 2017, Live By Night is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

“LIVE BY NIGHT” MAIN POSTER CONFIRMS AFFLECK'S ANTIHERO ROLE

Press release

Warner Bros. Pictures has just revealed the payoff poster of the crime thriller Live by Night showing a gun-pointing Ben Affleck, all-suited up as a mobster. The tagline confirms that his character is an antihero: “Joe Was Once a Good Man.”

Check out the poster below and watch Live by Night (read my full review here) when it opens in Philippine cinemas on January 18, 2017.

Aside from directing and acting on the film, Affleck wrote the screenplay, based on the award-winning best-seller by Dennis Lehane; it marks the second collaboration for the fellow Boston natives, following the acclaimed drama “Gone Baby Gone.”

What you put out into this world will always come back to you, but it never comes back how you predict. Taking fatherly advice is not in Joe Coughlin’s nature. Instead, the WWI vet is a self-proclaimed anti-establishment outlaw, despite being the son of the Boston Police Deputy Superintendent. Joe’s not all bad, though; in fact, he’s not really bad enough for the life he’s chosen. Unlike the gangsters he refuses to work for, he has a sense of justice and an open heart, and both work against him, leaving him vulnerable time and again—in business and in love. Driven by a need to right the wrongs committed against him and those close to him, Joe heads down a risky path that goes against his upbringing and his own moral code. Leaving the cold Boston winter behind, he and his reckless crew turn up the heat in Tampa. And while revenge may taste sweeter than the molasses that infuses every drop of illegal rum he runs, Joe will learn that it comes at a price.

Starring with Affleck are Elle Fanning (“Maleficent”), Brendan Gleeson (the “Harry Potter” films), Chris Messina (“Argo”), Sienna Miller (“American Sniper”), Zoe Saldana (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Avatar”), and Oscar winner Chris Cooper (“The Town”).

“Live By Night” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

AFFLECK LEARNS INDONESIAN FIGHTING STYLE FOR “THE ACCOUNTANT”

Press release

Ben Affleck stars in Warner Bros.' action-thriller The Accountant as Christian Wolff, a specially trained assassin who happens to be a math savant suffering from Asperger's Syndrome. Director Gavin O’Connor knew that Christian should have an idiosyncratic fighting style, forged by his childhood training and his personal penchant for order.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

O'Connor maintains, “I wanted to approach the action through character, with the thought being when Chris got into a situation that required violence, he would eliminate the threat as quickly and economically as possible. It’s math. It’s ‘How do I make my move and get them off the chessboard?’”

Conferring with stunt coordinators Sam Hargrave and Fernando Chien, the director explored various types of martial arts. Nothing quite fit the bill until they showed him an Indonesian method that is less widely known, called pentjak silat. “I immediately said, ‘I want that,” he recalls. “I’d never even heard of silat before, but it’s incredibly efficient, so it served our purpose in a very cinematic way. We honed in on that form and built the action around it.”

Hargrave and Chien, together with their stunt team, started training Affleck, keeping in mind O’Connor’s desire to mirror Chris’s persona in the action. Chien confirms, “His style needed to be almost surgical—very linear and direct. He wouldn’t bounce around like a boxer. We mainly focused on silat, but because of how dynamic Ben needed to be in his fights, we also taught him judo, jiu-jitsu…everything from the ground up, but extremely stylized.”

“This martial arts technique hasn’t been seen in too many movies before so it felt fresh and new,” Affleck says. “I loved the style, so I dove into training as hard as I could. I spent months ahead of filming learning elaborate fight choreography, which involved a lot of flips and throws. Performing almost all of the action myself was difficult and demanding, but, luckily, I had the benefit of some really strong coaches and stunt performers who came up with some cool and unique stuff for me to do. It was very intense, but when it all came together and was done right, it could be beautiful and elegant, even though it was brutal.”

Chien acknowledges that Affleck, who came into the film right after portraying Batman, was already in fighting shape—just not in the same way that Christian had to be. “For that film, he became really buff and muscular, but this character needed to be slick and more quick—very direct and explosive—so we did more martial arts conditioning with a lot of dynamic movements.”

Hargrove adds, “We had a small gym where we would go for about two hours a day. Fernando and I put him through his paces, making drills out of the choreography and having Ben practice them over and over again until every move became like second nature to him. We sometimes drove him to the point of exhaustion, but Ben never gave up. He put in the work and came back stronger every day.”

O’Connor observes, “Ben had to travel different paths in making sure we got both the physical and emotional aspects of the character right, which was vital. He was working out every day and getting all the choreography down because he was doing most of it himself. In just a short amount of time, he had to look like he’d been studying his entire life, so it was a crash course for him and I think he did an amazing job.”

Opening across the Philippines on Nov. 02, “The Accountant” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment company.

FIRST TRAILER OF BEN AFFLECK'S “LIVE BY NIGHT” ARRIVES ONLINE

Press Release

Warner Bros. Pictures has just revealed the first trailer of Ben Affleck's latest directorial effort, the dramatic crime thriller “Live by Night.”

Affleck also stars in the film and wrote the screenplay, based on the award-winning best-seller by Dennis Lehane; it marks the second collaboration for the fellow Boston natives, following the acclaimed drama “Gone Baby Gone.”

“Live by Night” is set in the roaring `20s when Prohibition hasn’t stopped the flow of booze in an underground network of gangster-run speakeasies. The opportunity to gain power and money is there for any man with enough ambition and nerve and Joe Coughlin (Affleck), the son of the Boston Police Superintendent, long ago turned his back on his strict upbringing for the spoils of being an outlaw. But even among criminals there are rules and Joe breaks a big one: crossing a powerful mob boss by stealing his money and his moll. The fiery affair ends in tragedy, setting Joe on a path of revenge, ambition, romance and betrayal that propels him out of Boston and up the ladder of Tampa’s steamy rum-running underworld.

“Live by Night” is produced by Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Wolf of Wall Street”) and Jennifer Davisson (“Orphan”), under the Appian Way banner; and Ben Affleck and Jennifer Todd (“Alice in Wonderland”) for Pearl Street Films. Chris Brigham, Dennis Lehane and Chay Carter are serving as executive producers.

Starring with Affleck are Elle Fanning (“Maleficent”), Brendan Gleeson (the “Harry Potter” films), Chris Messina (“Argo”), Sienna Miller (“American Sniper”), Zoe Saldana (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Avatar”), and Oscar winner Chris Cooper (“The Town”).

Behind the scenes, Affleck collaborated with three-time Oscar-winning director of photography Robert Richardson (“JFK,” “The Aviator,” “Hugo”), Oscar-nominated production designer Jess Gonchor (“True Grit”), Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg (“Argo”), and Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”). The score is composed by Harry Gregson-Williams (“The Martian,” “Gone Baby Gone”).

A Warner Bros. Pictures presentation, an Appian Way/Pearl Street production, “Live By Night” is slated for release in the Philippines in 2017, and will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Ben Affleck in Argo

Ben Affleck directs and stars in Warner Bros.’ acclaimed thriller “Argo” in which he plays real-life CIA “exfiltration” specialist Tony Mendez, an expert in getting people out of hostile spots.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

“Argo” chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis, focusing on the little-known role that the CIA and Hollywood played—information that was not declassified until many years after the event.

On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing it is only a matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed, CIA agent Tony Mendez comes up with a risky plan to get them safely out of the country. A plan so incredible, it could only happen in the movies.

             Screenwriter Chris Terrio says, “Tony Mendez has to go into what is really the ‘belly of the beast’—the scariest place in the world if you’re an American—and get six people out. And the clock is ticking. He is also coming up against forces—whether bureaucratic or geopolitical—that are making the task even harder than it already is. At a certain point, you can’t imagine it will end well because there are too many things saying it won’t. The pressure on him couldn’t be higher, but the essence of Tony is that he’s just a guy doing his job.”

             Affleck notes, “Tony steps up and does what he’s asked to do, completely in secret. No fanfare, no high-fives…just do the job and, if you succeed, go home and keep your mouth shut. He puts his life on the line to try and save these people and that’s heroic stuff. It’s impressive and also quite humbling.”

             Producer Grant Heslov remarks that Affleck possesses many of the qualities they saw in the role. “Ben has a sort of quiet intensity about him that fit how we envisioned Tony. He is also a very smart guy, and you need this character to feel smart; it’s important that he appear in control of the situation and is capable of calling an audible if need be. And Ben is naturally funny, which was great in delivering that brand of dry humor, particularly when Tony heads to Hollywood.”

Affleck concludes, “`Argo' is thrilling and suspenseful and scary, but it’s also funny and, I hope, entertaining. On a deeper level, it’s about the power of storytelling because for so long this story could not be told. But this is a moment when we can all be proud of what these people did.”

              “Argo” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.