Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com

Greed isn't so good for Ben Affleck.

Hollywood is looking to turn the economic meltdown into box-office gold, with Affleck in negotiations to topline The Company Men, as a victim of Wall Street's corporate downsizing.

ER's Emmy-winning writer-producer John Wells will make his feature-directing debut on the project, per the Hollywood Reporter, based on his own screenplay.

Next up for Affleck is the romcom He's Just Not That Into You, followed by the political thriller State of Play and the Mike Judge romp Extract.

In the day's other top deal doings:

Keep Reading

The prospect of another mouth to feed has Ben Affleck heading back to work.

The soon-to-be two-time dad has signed on to play an ambulance-chasing attorney in Extract, the latest comedy from Beavis and Butt-Head and Office Space mastermind Mike Judge.

Affleck, who turned 36 last week, has been on a Hollywood hiatus of sorts, focusing on his beloved BoSox, saving the world and helping better half Jennifer Garner raise their 2-year-old daughter, Violet. All signs point to a second bun in Garner's oven, though there's no word on a due date.

Keep Reading

WENN

We've often thought of Ben Affleck as being like our neighbor's golden retreiver Sandy: a cheery, dependable lunk, but not too bright. Sort of like a much nicer version of his Dazed and Confused character, O'Bannion.

So imagine our surprise when we see ol' Benny in the August issue of O magazine, listing what books made a difference to him, and choosing Strunk & White's classic writing how-to, The Elements of Style.

It's cute and refreshing for an A-lister like Affleck to give props to the old standard, when most of H'wood believes The Elements of Style is Tim Gunn's new tome and good grammar refers to Kelsey Grammer's Emmy awards.

On behalf of copy editors and English teachers everywhere, thanks for caring and sharing, Ben!

Daniel George/ZUMApress.com

As Angelina knows all too well, those costars can be real bean spillers sometimes. But Victor Garber isn't one of them.

The actor who played Jennifer Garner's dad on Alias tells E! News that his words were taken out of context when UsMagazine.com quoted him responding, "Yes, she is," to the question of whether Garner was expecting child No. 2 with hubby Ben Affleck.

"I haven't confirmed that at all, no," Garber said tonight at an ABC event. "I know they want to have another child and hopefully that's true, but I don't know that."

"No, I know that they are hoping to be," the Eli Stone star added. "I just don't know that it's for sure. It's a very...personal thing."

None of which means, however, that Garner isn't pregnant.

Keep Reading

AP Photo/Isaac Brekken

Everyone was all in for a good cause.

Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle were among the Hollywood types who gathered Wednesday at the Rio Pavilion in Las Vegas for a no-limit Texas Hold' em tournament benefiting victims of the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Also forking over the $5,000 entrance fee were Adam Sandler, George Lopez, Ray Romano and Jason Alexander, who optimistically said, "When there's no actual money for me, I'm very good."

Keep Reading

George Pimentel/WireImage.com

Ben Affleck's latest small-screen appearance is unlikely to turn viral, but he hopes it will generate just as much publicity as his Jimmy Kimmel-kissing last one.

The actor-turned-activist, who in May returned from his third trip to the Congo in the past eight months, will appear in a special documentary on tonight's edition of Nightline to shed more of a global light on the often overlooked, yet terribly devastated, region.

"It makes sense to be skeptical about celebrity activism," Affleck wrote in an online essay about his trip. "There is always suspicion that involvement with a cause may be doing more good for the spokesman than he or she is doing for the cause."

Keep Reading

CNN

He's no Angelina Jolie—heck, he's no George Clooney—but in terms of politically minded celebrity do-gooders, Ben Affleck is on his way.

The Oscar winner and avowed Jimmy Kimmel f--ker has become the latest A-lister to put his passport where his rhetoric is, traveling to Sudan to witness firsthand the region's humanitarian crisis.

"I wanted to really feel like I understood the place and learn as much as I could about it, though, before I got into trying to be an advocate and kind of running my mouth about it," Affleck told CNN.

"I think it's probably a healthy thing to keep that level of cynicism about celebrities who get involved with things...What I've pointed the camera at is showing you something that is completely honest, which is that this situation and this potential civil war here...demands attention regardless of what you think about me."