Summary

• Affleck and Damon co-wrote The Last Duel and starred in Air, which are two of their best works since Good Will Hunting.
• The Last Duel and Air had contrasting box office performances, with the former underperforming and the latter doing better.
• projects include The Instigators, RIP, and Animals, with Damon and Affleck continuing their great collaboration.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been a celebrated Hollywood duo since their breakthrough hit movie Good Will Hunting. Not only did Damon and Affleck both star in the Academy Award-winning film alongside Casey Affleck, Minnie Driver, Stellan Skarsgård, and Robin Williams, but they also co-wrote the screenplay, which earned them the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1998. Since then, Damon has only written screenplays for three other movies, including Gerry (2002) and Promised Land (2012). Affleck, on the other hand, wrote the screenplays for Gone Baby Gone (2007), The Town (2010), and Live By Night (2016).

Surprisingly, Affleck and Damon have only co-written one other screenplay after Good Will Hunting. The film also happens to be one of the more overlooked recent movies directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ridley Scott, whose highly anticipated Gladiator sequel is finally set to be released in December 2024. Damon and Affleck co-wrote The Last Duel alongside Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said, Extrapolations, You Hurt My Feelings) under Scott's direction. The Last Duel is only one of a handful of onscreen collaborations between Damon and Affleck, which also includes Project Greenlight (2001-2015), Dogma (1999), and the celebrated 2023 sports docudrama Air.

The Last Duel & Air Are Ben Affleck & Matt Damon's Two Best Movies Since Good Will Hunting

Affleck and Damon co-wrote the screenplay for The Last Duel

Of the various Air was a massive success among critics and audiences, earning a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 93% and an impressive audience score of 98%.

The Last Duel is also widely celebrated, earning a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 85% and an audience score of 81%. Although neither of these films found the Academy Award success that Good Will Hunting did over two decades ago, both were considered among the very best new movies of their respective years. Interestingly, both The Last Duel and Air give Affleck more of a ing role to Damon's leading role, similar to the onscreen relationship between Will and Chuckie in Good Will Hunting. While Affleck is undoubtedly a bonafide movie star in his own right, his ing roles in his Damon collaborations are some of the most enjoyable performances of his acting career.

The Last Duel & Air Both Underperformed At The Box Office

While The Last Duel earned widespread critical acclaim, the film was a massive box office flop, earning a worldwide box office of just $30 million against its hefty production budget of $100 million. This made it the 95th highest-grossing movie of 2021, an abysmal ranking compared to Spider-Man: No Way Home's $1.9 billion gross, which easily topped the worldwide box office that year. Ridley Scott famously blamed the millennial generation for the film's box office failure, claiming that there was a decreased interest in the history that The Last Duel focused on among younger generations.

Air made just under $90 million at the worldwide box office against its production budget of roughly $90 million. The film was produced by Amazon Studios and was originally meant to be released directly on Amazon Prime Video, which it eventually was soon after its unexpected theatrical release. Air was given a shortened theatrical window due to how positively it tested among audiences, so essentially an exception was made that allowed the film to get a brief wide release in theaters before it became available to stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Compared to The Last Duel, Air was much more successful at the box office.

What Ben Affleck & Matt Damon Are Doing Next

The Instigators, RIP, and Animals are coming soon

It's no surprise that Damon and Affleck are continuing to work together into the 2020s. The Instigators, which Damon stars in alongside Casey Affleck, was directed by Doug Liman and produced by Ben Affleck. It wouldn't be shocking if Ben made an appearance in that film, which comes out on August 9, 2024. Matt and Ben are also set to collaborate on two films for Netflix. RIP is a newly announced crime thriller starring Affleck and Damon written and directed by Joe Carnahan, while Animals is another thriller that is set to be directed by Affleck and stars Damon. The Good Will Hunting duo shows no signs of slowing things down.

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