It’s the superhero movie news few of us… well, ok, none of us… saw coming.

Variety reported today that Warner Bros. is considering hiring Ben Affleck to direct the upcoming Justice League film adaptation, with a script by Gangster Squad writer Will Beall.

Warner Bros., as many of you probably already know, owns DC Comics, so their studio is in charge of bringing folks like Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and all those other DC top dogs to the big screen, like, well… in a Justice League movie (duh, right?).

Now, before you start scoffing and saying things like, “Ben Affleck? From Good Will Hunting and Pearl Harbor and Daredevil and stuff? He’s like, DIRECTING sh!t now? Good lord, what are they thinking?” it’s worth noting that he also directed critically acclaimed films like The Town and Gone Baby Gone. He may surprise you with what he can do behind the scenes.

But before I have you running around thinking that the deal’s been settled already, I’ll just tell you that it actually hasn’t. He’s being considered and will be meeting with execs soon, according to Variety, so nothing’s been confirmed.

And Deadline is claiming that Affleck’s reps are saying he’s not doing it. (But that he is indeed meeting with execs, so their news is kinda the same as Variety’s).

Apparently, Affleck has said in the past that he’d only direct films he could act in, so it’s possible that he’d play a role in the film if he wound up directing it. None of his reps or Warners would talk to Variety to confirm or deny, though, so who knows?

Affleck’s got other potential deals with Warners on his plate, too. He could direct an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand and Replay, a sci-fi thriller about a man who re-lives his life repeatedly, with different partners and careers each time. It’s unclear at this point if he’d be able to do either of those if he accepted Justice League. 

In DC’s comic universe, the Justice League is the alpha team equivalent to Marvel’s Avengers, so it appears that Warners is getting its ducks in a row to produce the blockbuster version of their A-Team, especially since The Avengers just made enough money in the theaters to bankroll ten small countries for at least a few years. Big screen superheroes, as you know, are in.

Just yesterday, Marvel and Disney announced that Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed The Avengers, is returning for the sequel, so today’s announcement by DC and Warners could be calculated to steal some of that media buzz away from their No. 1 competitor, though that Marvel buzz will return in full force once the Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America sequels start coming out.

But DC’s got The Man of Steel coming next year, and if that’s a hit, then the DC buzz will grow powerful enough to sustain itself for a while if the marketing department works it right, I suppose.