Steven Spielberg and Ben Affleck are two of the most iconic names in Hollywood, and they were once going to work together - until a pool party moment from years earlier shut the whole thing down.
Filmmaker and comedian Mike Binder was a guest on Stephen Baldwin’s One Bad Movie podcast, where he claimed that Spielberg flat-out refused to collaborate with Affleck over an incident involving one of Spielberg’s kids and Affleck’s then-girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Binder says the story goes back to the early 2000s, when he was developing Man About Town. The "War Horse" director was intrigued and even told him, “We gotta do something together. I want you to write something for me.” The script was partially inspired by a real-life home invasion at Spielberg’s house.
Then Affleck signed on to star. And suddenly, everything stopped. According to Binder, Spielberg immediately shut it down. “No. Can’t do it with him,” he reportedly said, pointing to Affleck’s recent box-office bombs and the very loud “J. Lo thing” dominating headlines at the time. “We just bombed with a movie with him, he’s got that whole JLo thing going on now, and I have other problems with him," he explained.
But that wasn’t the real issue. There was something more personal simmering underneath. At the time, Affleck was dating Paltrow, Spielberg’s goddaughter. They were together on and off from 1997 to 2000 and co-starred in Shakespeare in Love and Bounce. During a family vacation, Spielberg claimed things went wrong at a pool party.
As Binder retold it, Spielberg said his young son was playing in the pool when he pushed Affleck, fully clothed, into the water as a joke. Affleck, "got really mad at him," got out of the pool, picked his son up, threw him back into the pool, and made him cry. The ET director has three sons: Max Spielberg, Sawyer Avery Spielberg, and adopted son Theo Spielberg, along with daughters Jessica, Sasha, Mikaela (adopted), and Destry.
That moment, Spielberg said, stuck with him. “I just don’t like to work with him,” Spielberg reportedly told Binder. “Plus, his last two movies bombed. Find somebody else. Anyone but him. He’s cold as hell.”
When Binder later told Affleck the movie wasn’t happening anymore, Affleck immediately suspected why. “Did Steven Spielberg tell you I threw his kid in the water?” he allegedly asked. “Is that why I’m not in your movie?”
At first, he tried to maintain that Spielberg didn’t spell it out that bluntly, “I said, ‘No, he didn’t say'" he said. "'Yes, he did! He told you I threw his kid in the water. That’s why I’m not on the movie,” the Good Will Hunting star shot back.
In the end, Man About Town never became the Spielberg-Affleck collaboration it almost was. Binder directed it himself, and the film quietly went straight to DVD.
Years later, the whole thing turned into a joke. After Argo beat Spielberg’s Lincoln at the 2013 Oscars, Binder texted Affleck: “Ben, tonight you could throw Spielberg’s whole family in the pool and get away with it.” Putting water under the bridge, the "Hypotic" star responded, “That made me laugh so f–king hard.”
Hollywood grudges may run deep, but at least this one is hilarious.