With Matt Reeves’ War for the Planet of the Apes now in UK cinemas, the director’s attention is now fully on his next project: The Batman. In an interesting new twist, though, Reeves has revealed that he’s getting set to start from scratch on the story of that movie.

Previously, a screenplay had been put together by Ben Affleck and DC’s Geoff Johns, with Affleck’s Caped Crusader to battle Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke in a movie that at one point had Affleck on directing duties. As the workload became too much, Affleck dropped the directing gig, and now Matt Reeves is the one tasked with helming the first cinematic solo outing for Batfleck.

On the script for the film, Reeves told MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, “It’s a new story. We’re starting again.” He would elaborate a little further to Uproxx, explaining, “I can fail for every single reason because of myself. I don’t want to fail because of something that I don’t believe in in the first place – because I’m not going to know how to do it. I can respect that somebody else might know exactly how to do it. Like there are plenty of things that I’m not the right director for and I love to go see those movies. I love to see what people can do. But I can only do what I can do, and so I have to work from that perspective for self-preservation. It’s not out of any kind of like, ‘My way or the highway!’ It’s because that’s the way I have to do it for me to feel confident in my choices.”

In fairness, you can easily see Reeves’ point; if you’re tasked with directing a film whose story you’re not happy with then you’re going to be facing an uphill battle to get fully invested in the job. Still, this doesn’t bode too well for Warner Brothers and The Batman, as obviously starting again on the script will push things back a little in terms of getting cameras rolling.

Adding to this, the notion of restarting the script and story means that pretty much all bets are off. As in, maybe Deathstroke might be scrapped as the villain of the piece, or it could even be that Affleck himself may choose not to return to the cape and cowl after this November’s Justice League.

As ever, expect more on The Batman as it continues to develop.