How Ben Affleck Really Feels About His and Jennifer Lopez’s Movie Gigli Today

November 12, 2024 - by USA Sky News - Leave a Comment

While Ben Affleck and Matt Damon detailed the precarious nature of the film industry, the Air director admitted he doesn’t “feel right” toward his and Jennifer Lopez’s Gigli.

Ben Affleck knows that not all of his movies are hits.

In fact, the Air director recently addressed the box office failure of his and Jennifer Lopez’s 2003 film Gigli, and why he still feels a bit guilty about it today.

“I’ve been in movies like Gigli, that’s a famous example,” he explained in a Deadline interview alongside pal Matt Damon published Nov. 8. “I got a big cash payday for that. Well, it doesn’t feel right in retrospect because they lost money.”

Indeed, Ben admitted that his and Matt’s company Artists Equity—which seeks to “reimagine” the relationship between studios, actors and distributors—ensures that sort of inequity doesn’t occur in its films.

“It wasn’t the biggest money-losing movie in history even though it was the most famous bomb in history, perhaps,” Ben reflected of Gigli. “Nonetheless, that doesn’t sit right with me.”

And while other films have lost more in earnings, Ben—who shares kids Violet, 18, Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 12, with ex Jennifer Garner—is right, few box office bombs are as famous as his and J.Lo’s 2003 film.

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The $72 million project only net $7 million in sales, and the Argo star previously posited that the fame surrounding the flop stemmed from his early aughts relationship with J.Lo.

“The truth about that movie and what it taught me was how much everything around a movie sort of dictates the way people see it,” Ben explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2022. “But for being a movie that’s such a famous bomb and a disaster, very few people actually saw the movie.”

Indeed, Ben noted that his relationship with J.Lo—with whom he later rekindled in 2021 and married a year later before she filed for divorce this August—is one of the main reasons the film became what it did.

“I had begun having this relationship with Jennifer Lopez, which was selling a lot of magazines and appeared to generate a lot of enthusiasm,” Ben continued, adding of the studio: “They just predictably latched onto, ‘They want a romantic comedy. They want the two of them together. More of that!’”

Phillip Caruso/Columbia/Revolution/Kobal/Shutterstock

Still, Ben also called the negative reaction of the film “a gift.”

“The reaction to Gigli hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided, ‘I don’t really have any other avenue but to direct movies,’ which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life,” he noted. “And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.”

Indeed, J.Lo also shared that her meet-cute with Ben on the set of Gigli is the only memorable part of the film to her.

“I don’t remember a whole bunch about it,” she admitted to Variety in February. “But I remember being on the set with him every day—and loving it.”

Gigli may have flopped in sales, but keep reading for how it was a catalyst for one of the greatest love stories never told: