Ben Affleck keeps the door open for a future project with Jennifer Garner

Ben Affleck says he still wants to work with his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, even though he decided not to cast her in his new thriller, Animals.

In a recent exchange, Affleck, 54, told Variety, "I still want to find something to do with" Garner, also 54. He said casting her as his on-screen wife would have brought too much real-life baggage into the film. "In a movie, the illusion has to be the thing," he said.

He first imagined Garner and his longtime friend Matt Damon, 55, in leading roles in the Netflix political thriller, which opens in select cinemas and on Netflix on Friday. Damon had to drop out because of his commitment to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, so Affleck took the lead role himself. Kerry Washington, 49, was cast as his wife.

Affleck also recently addressed the replacement in an interview with GQ, saying, "She was like, 'Yeah, we can't...'" He explained that audiences bring "all this stuff" to a casting like that in a negative way. "Though I would love to work with Jennifer Garner, she's brilliant," he added at the time as well.

He said something similar to Entertainment Weekly in September. "She's fabulous, and we're really good friends, and I'm profoundly grateful to her," he said. He added that he would still like to work with her in the future, but doesn't want to "take the audience's baggage and have it work against you."

Animals, which Affleck also directed and co-wrote, follows a Los Angeles mayoral candidate and his wife as they try to raise a ransom after their son is kidnapped.

Affleck and Garner, who appeared together in Pearl Harbor and Daredevil, married for a decade and finalised their divorce in 2018. They have three children, including Violet, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14.