Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s movie gets major world premiere amid divorce rumors
Love don’t cost a thing.
Amid rumors that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are heading toward divorce, their film “Unstoppable” will have its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival in September.
They have yet to announce if they will attend the premiere together.
Affleck, 51, and Lopez, 54, have not officially confirmed a breakup, but they’ve been rumored to be on the rocks since May.
“Bennifer” was first linked from 2002 to 2004.
Affleck and Lopez went on to marry and have kids with Jennifer Garner and Marc Anthony, respectively. They got back together in 2021, married in 2022 and now share a blended family of five kids. Affleck has three children — Violet, 18, Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 12 — with Garner, 52, while Lopez is mom to 16-year-old twins Emme and Max with ex-husband Anthony.
In May, it was reported that Affleck was staying at a separate house from Lopez. That same month, Lopez was spotted house hunting without Affleck.
“The View” hosts weighed in on their possible split shortly after, with Joy Behar saying, “When you go around shouting your love from the rooftops, it gets tricky when things don’t go well. My advice is keep your mouth shut.”
Amid the speculation, resurfaced footage from Lopez’s Prime Video documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” (now streaming) highlighted their differences.
In it, Affleck said that he refused to have their relationship broadcast on social media.
“Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,’” he said in the film.
“Then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like you’re going to marry a boat captain and (you’re like), ‘Well, I don’t like the water.’”
InTouch reported that Lopez and the “Gone Girl” actor are in therapy to work on their marital issues.
“Ben believes in therapy, to a point, and is willing to be a good sport about participating with an open mind, even though he hates the whole humiliating process,” a source told the outlet.
In June, the couple’s $60 million Beverly Hills mansion was also listed on Zillow. That same month, when Affleck’s son Samuel graduated, Lopez arrived separately and kept her distance.
Lopez also jetted off to an exotic vacation in Italy without Affleck amid rumors he’s “come to his senses.”
“If there was a way to divorce on grounds of temporary insanity, he would,” an insider told Page Six in May. “He feels like the last two years was just a fever dream, and he’s come to his senses now and understands there is just no way this is going to work.”
Last week, Affleck and Lopez were photographed spending their second wedding anniversary on separate coasts. She was seen riding her bike in the Hamptons, and he was spotted en route to his Los Angeles office. Over the weekend, she also celebrated her upcoming 55th birthday without him.
Earlier this month, a source told Page Six that they’ve been apart since March, but Affleck is “very protective of Jennifer.”
Bennifer’s movie “Unstoppable” is produced by Affleck and Matt Damon. It stars Lopez, Jharrel Jerome, Bobby Cannavale and Don Cheadle. The film is a biographical sports drama about Anthony Robles, a wrestling champ who was raised in an abusive household and born without his right leg.
“Unstoppable” comes two decades after Affleck and Lopez previously worked together on the 2003 movie “Gigli” and 2004’s “Jersey Girl.” The former was an infamous disaster, earning a paltry $7 million in the box office off a production budget of $75 million.
“For being a movie that’s such a famous bomb and a disaster, very few people actually saw the movie,” Affleck told EW in a 2022 interview.
He added that all the publicity around “Bennifer” as a couple “became a story in and of itself. The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm.”
He recalled talking to the director after the movie came out “and I was like it’s just spectacular, it’s a tsunami, it couldn’t be worse. This is as bad as it gets.”
Affleck called the experience “depressing,” and said it filled him with “self-doubt.”
“But if 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 added. “So in those ways, it’s a gift.”
The 49th Toronto International Film Festival will have a star-studded line up. In addition to Affleck and Lopez’s movie, it will also include a Pamela Anderson movie (“The Last Showgirl”), a Samuel L. Jackson movie ( “The Piano Lesson”), an Angelina Jolie-directed project (“Without Blood”), an Elton John documentary (“Elton John: Never Too Late”) and a new Bruce Springsteen doc (“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band”).
An exact premiere date has not been announced, but TIFF is September 5 through 15.
