Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s certainly not Matt Damon.
The Oscar-winner may have read comics as a kid, but he can’t picture himself playing a superhero such as Batman — like his best friend Ben Affleck is doing in Warner Bros.’ upcoming slate of DC Comics superhero movies.
“I think he approached it the right way, which is, ‘Can I make a great superhero movie?’ rather than, ‘Do I want to play a superhero?’ I’d consider it if the right thing came along,” Damon told the Daily News while promoting his newest film, “The Martian.”
He does, however, sometimes wonder about the one that got away.
“For us it was always ‘Daredevil’ — that’s the comic we read when we were kids,” says Damon. “But when that one came along (in 2003) I chickened out, because I couldn’t tell. I hadn’t seen the director (Mark Steven Johnson’s) work and I didn’t know. So I just said, ‘No.’ Ben was like, ‘I gotta do it.’
“And the movie ended up doing very well, even though I don’t think Ben was ultimately very proud of it.”
Damon — who proved his action star chops on the Bourne franchise, his fourth installment of which is currently filming — could still don a cape and cowl one day in the future.
“If Chris Nolan came up to me and said, ‘I want to do Daredevil,’ I would be in.”
That seems unlikely, because Charlie Cox is playing the blind vigilante in an acclaimed Netflix series. And Nolan is tied to Warner Bros.’ heroes as a director and producer, making him an arch-nemesis of Marvel, which holds the rights to Daredevil.
Damon would, however, be happy to helm one of those $200 million superhero flicks, since directing is his real top future priority.
“Just putting that out there,” he joked.
