Steven Spielberg Refused to Work With Ben Affleck After Incident Involving Director’s Son

Hollywood heavyweight Steven Spielberg reportedly refused to work with Batman hunk Ben Affleck over a bizarre incident involving one of the Indiana Jones director’s kids.

Filmmaker Mike Binder said on Stephen Baldwin‘s One Bad Movie podcast that he learned about the grudge when Spielberg agreed to work with him on a movie titled Man About Town in the early 2000s — until Binder told him Affleck had signed on as the star.

Spielberg reportedly balked — noting that Affleck’s two recent movies hadn’t done well, saying: “I just don’t like to work with him. Plus his last two movies bombed.”

“Find somebody else. Anyone but him. He’s cold as hell.”

Binder says the Jurassic Park director also told him about a party at his house where he’d invited Affleck, who had dated Gwyneth Paltrow, Spielberg’s goddaughter, in the late ’90s.

“My son was a little boy, he was playing in the pool, and he got out of the pool, and Ben came in fully dressed, and my son pushed Ben into the pool,” Binder says Spielberg told him.

“And Ben got really mad at him, and he came out of the pool and picked him up and threw him back into the pool, and made my son cry.”

Later, when Binder told Affleck that the deal was stalled, “Ben calls me up, he says, ‘Did Steven Spielberg tell you I threw his kid in the water? Is that what happened? Is that why I’m not on your movie?’

“I said, ‘No’ … [and Affleck says] ‘Yes he did! He told you I threw his kid in the water. That’s why I’m not on the movie.’ ”

Binder and Affleck did later make 2006’s Man About Town — it went straight to video!