Ben Affleck is a huge fan of fellow Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt, according to a source who exclusively tells In Touch they’ve wanted to team up for years – and the conditions have never been better, since both stars are embracing their sobriety and more determined than ever to stay relevant in Hollywood!
“Brad has a relationship with the Afflecks that goes back years,” the insider explains, “unlike a lot of Hollywood friendships, [theirs] isn’t built around money or mutual success or even just their mutual struggles with sobriety.”
Ben, 52, quit drinking after making Good Will Hunting with best friend Matt Damon in 1997.
“I just wanted to stop. I started regretting some things I did when I was drunk,” he told Fox News just after putting the bottle down in 1998. Since, The Last Duel star has had his ups and downs as he battles against addiction.
The Academy Award winner finally decided to seek treatment for the first time in August 2001, then again in February 2017. His wife at the time, Jennifer Garner, even staged an intervention that prompted his third rehab stay in August 2018.
Similarly, Brad, 60, decided to lay off the liquor after his high-profile split from Angelina Jolie in 2016. The two have yet to formally finalize their divorce, but the separation was fraught with allegations the Fury actor had abused Angelina, 49, and the couple’s kids while drunk.
The A-lister stated he couldn’t “remember a day since I got out of college where I wasn’t boozing or had a [marijuana] spliff, or something,” in an interview with GQ in May 2017.
Still, even before they both got sober, the two were fond of each other, according to the source.
The insider continues: “It goes both ways: Ben has had a soft spot for Brad for a good 20 years now, and Brad has even been something of a surrogate big brother to Ben’s brother Casey [Affleck], especially in Brad and Casey’s collaborations on The Assassination of Jesse James as well as the failed Lewis and Clark project for HBO that never saw the light of day [despite extensive shooting].”
“Brad and Ben have also been working for years to find a movie to make together with their friend David Fincher.”
In 2015, Ben and Brad tried to secure financing for a reboot of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Strangers on a Train, with both actors set to headline in the movie. They even got Gillian Flynn, who adapted Gone Girl’s source material for Ben, to work up the script and David Fincher to direct.
It seemed like a layup for Fox and New Regency, considering Gone Girl had raked in $350 million against a $60 million budget, but the stars weren’t aligned for the Hollywood hunks back then and the movie never found the funding it needed to get off the ground.
“The timing has never been better for them to formally join forces, though, especially now that Ben and Matt [Damon] have hundreds of millions of dollars in financing for their re-launched production company.”
