As Ben Affleck turned 49, fans have renewed their calls for Warner Bros. to make a solo Batman movie with the actor in the lead role. The #MakeTheBatfleckMovie tag being circulating again to once again attempt to push Warner Bros. to move ahead with the planned movie that Affleck was set to star in before Matt Reeves came in, stole away the project and made it into the Robert Pattinson reboot The Batman. Affleck was most recently seen as the Caped Crusader in new footage shot for Zack Snyder's Justice League, and will appear one more time in The Flash movie next year, but for many fans that just isn't enough.

With Zack Snyder celebrating his Batman's birthday with an unseen photo of Affleck in the Batsuit, fans were all over Twitter with their calls for the chance to see their Batman returning for the solo movie that never was.

"We live in a society where the best Batman doesn't have a solo movie," one Twitter user said, with another adding , "Because the best Batman ever made deserves his own trilogy. It's time to #MakeTheBatfleckMovie."

This is not the first time that the hashtag has done the rounds on social media, and this time around it was gaining momentum to just over 50,000 tweets, having been boosted by both the campaign to release Zack Snyder's Justice League being a success and by the movie itself, which set up Affleck's solo movie in its final scenes when Deathstroke revealed the secret identity of Batman to Lex Luthor and delivered and offer to get rid of the Bat. I mean, like that wasn't going to build the clamor for what might have been to become what could be again.

Last year Deathstroke actor Joe Manganiello talked to Yahoo about the never-to-be Batman movie and how it was "a really dark story in which Deathstroke was like a shark or a horror movie villain that was dismantling Bruce's life from the inside out. It was this systemic thing. He killed everyone close to Bruce and destroyed his life to try and make him suffer because he felt that Bruce was responsible for something that happened to him."

While we have already seen the result of persistent fan power in the fact we have now seen the version of Justice League Zack Snyder had always intended to release, and it will probably stand as a "what if" moment of movie history as to what would have happened if that version had been released as planned in 2016. As it stands, it may be a case that Affleck himself has no desire to make a solo movie any more, which seemed to be the case in comments he made last year.

"I had my fill of that. [Warner Bros.] said, 'Would you want to direct and star in a solo Batman movie?' I found that I had lost my enthusiasm or passion for it," Affleck said. "This should really be made by somebody for whom it's their wildest dream come true and, for me, it had become something different, and it was clear to me that it was time to move on. But I do have some really fond memories, particularly of Batman v Superman, and how exciting that was. And how energizing it was and how much fun we had."

While that hasn't stopped fans asking for the movie to be made, this time around, even fan power may not be enough to make their wishes come true.