Ben Affleck is one of the most successful stars to leap from writing to acting to filmmaking, and his latest film will premiere on Netflix this week. Animals sees Affleck starring as “Mark Kimball,” a mayoral candidate running a campaign in Los Angeles. When his son is kidnapped and held for ransom, Mark and his wife (Kerry Washington) must turn to a fixer for help (Gillian Anderson). But to get the payoff and save their son, Mark and his wife are forced to expose all the dirty secrets they are keeping from the world and from each other.
The film co-stars Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead), Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League), Matt Gerald (Avatar), Luis Gerardo Méndez (The Resort), Adriana Paz (The Huntress), and Christopher Woodley as Mark’s son, Denny. ComicBook’s Chris Killian had a chance to attend the press junket for Animals, and we had to ask: has this film sparked any new political ambitions in Ben Affleck?
“You know, I spent a few years where I got quite involved with politics,” Affleck recalled. “And then, that really disillusioned me in a lot of ways. So I had a sort of fixed notion of what that was. And what this actually did was impress upon me like how unrewarding I think it can often be.”
“Like the one day of campaigning that we did, I think that was the most exhausting day ever. To go round shaking everybody’s hand, glad-handing, doing that thing; like you’re so exposed to people, and there’s this like… energy… this drain on you.
Also, politics works for this example because it seems to me to be the most common example of a time when you’re asked, potentially, to sacrifice on things that you really believe in, ostensibly for a higher goal, but where that doesn’t end up being the case. So no, I’m not that interested.”
Affleck doesn’t need to go into politics to make a statement or even affect change: he’s done quite well with both through his films. His Oscar-winning thriller Argo was also a political history lesson about America’s long-standing tensions with Iran (not relevant at all now, right?). It doesn’t require a Twitter account to see how Animals is tapping into some of the most red-hot socio-political discourse of the moment, and Luis Gerardo Méndez commended Ben for taking all those social and cultural considerations seriously, and (most importantly), listening to feedback from his cast.
“You know this is very important. We’re talking about a whole community, a very important moment in history, about migration, about human rights. And this is a massive Netflix thriller with Ben Affleck,” Méndez explained. “So what we say is important, so we better have the right conversations now before shooting. So it was beautiful to have that time to actually do it.”
It’s hard to come up with “fun” questions to ask about a film like Animals, so we picked the cast members’ brains about the very real and relevant landscape of politics right now, and what changes they are passionate about within their industry.
Affleck gave the heady answer of “fin-syn,” the “Financial Interest and Syndication Rules the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put in place in 1970, which prevented the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) from owning stakes in shows they aired but did not produce. It created an entire sub-industry of independent production companies, which networks purchased content from; in 1995, the rules were phased out due to pressure from cable networks, which opened the door to the major studio and network mergers we now see today (NBC Universal, CBS/Viacom/Paramount, Disney/ABC, etc.). In Affleck’s view, a market where there are independent production houses or smaller studios yields the best creative results.
Steven Yeun focused on the idea of increased ownership and better incentives, so that creators aren’t feeling compelled to make hollow, pre-packaged products that studios can easily throw into their pipelines. “It’s not because people aren’t talented; it’s because the incentives are off.”
Kerry Washington wasn’t afraid to speak right to the moment, saying AI is a big concern Hollywood creatives need to really be focused on right now. “I think really coming to some clearer understanding around consent, permissions, compensation, getting clarity and accountability in those areas feels really important.”
Animals will start streaming on Netflix this Friday.
