Just In: Ben Affleck Explains What ‘Doesn’t Sit Right’ with Him About His and Jennifer Lopez’s 2003 Film Gigli…. See More

Ben Affleck called ‘Gigli’ the “most famous bomb in history”

Ben Affleck is looking back on why his “big” payday for the 2003 flop Gigli “doesn’t sit right” with him today.

The Oscar winner, 52, and his frequent collaborator Matt Damon, 54, spoke about the business of filmmaking and their production company Artists Equity in an in-depth interview with Deadline.

While discussing pay structures for actors versus other stakeholders involved in creating a movie, Affleck used as an example the poor performance of Gigli, a movie he famously starred in with Jennifer Lopez.

“I got a big cash payday for that,” recalled Affleck. “Well, it doesn’t feel right in retrospect because they lost money. It wasn’t the biggest money-losing movie in history even though it was the most famous bomb in history, perhaps.”

“Nonetheless,” he continued, “that doesn’t sit right with me. But it also doesn’t sit right with people when they go, wait a minute, we all sacrificed to be committed to this. And then the old story about the $10 million movie that’s made $200 million and nobody’s seen a nickel.”

Affleck said the “answer” is “fairness,” as he explained the way creatives invest in a project from the get-go as part of Artists Equity’s mission.

That’s a basic fundamental principle that Matt and I are really drawn to, to create a fair deal for everybody that they can live with in success, in failure, or anywhere along the spectrum,” he said.

Artists Equity’s latest film is the drama Small Things Like These starring Cillian Murphy, and the company is also behind the upcoming sports movie Unstoppable, which stars Lopez.

Affleck, who is in the middle of divorce negotiations with Lopez after she filed to end their two-year marriage in August, told Deadline that “Jennifer Lopez is terrific in” Unstoppable. (In another recent interview, Affleck said he is “proud” of Unstoppable and that Lopez gives a “spectacular” performance.)

Unstoppable premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival several weeks after the divorce news, with Lopez and Damon attending the event in support of the project while Affleck was absent.

The crime-comedy Gigli, written and directed by Martin Brest and also starring Justin Bartha and Christopher Walken, received abysmal reviews in 2003 and underperformed at the box office.

Back in 2022, Affleck admitted to Entertainment Weekly that Gigli was “such a famous bomb and a disaster” but “very few people actually saw the movie.”

“It doesn’t work, by the way. It’s a sort of horse’s head in a cow’s body. And the studio at the time, because I had begun having this relationship with Jennifer Lopez, which was selling a lot of magazines and appeared to generate a lot of enthusiasm, they just predictably latched onto, ‘They want a romantic comedy. They want the two of them together. More of that!’ ”

He added at the time, “And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.”