They’ve collaborated onscreen before to varying degrees of success—truly, who could forget Gigli?—and now on-again, off-again power couple Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are partnering up yet again for an upcoming movie.
While at the 2023 Elle Women in Hollywood event on Tuesday, December 5, Lopez chatted with ET‘s Nischelle Turner about her upcoming studio album This Is Me…Now, which, like Beyonce and Taylor Swift’s recent tours, will be accompanied by a JLo documentary film. Her famous husband serves as a co-writer alongside Lopez and Matt Walton on the movie, entitled This Is Me…Now: The Film, though JLo assures “there’s been a bigger journey than just a love story here.”
This project was something I didn’t really plan. When the music was done I just thought to myself, ‘There’s more of a story to be told here. There’s been a bigger journey than just a love story here.’ And so it became a much bigger, fuller project, with an incredible message. And I realized I had to really get personal to tell it.
As for working with Affleck on the project—which, per a press release, is “a narrative-driven, intimate, reflective, sexy, funny, fantastical and highly visual musical reimagining of her publicly scrutinized love life—the multi-hyphenate performer told Entertainment Tonight that the real-life spouses “collaborate very well together.”
And nobody knows my story more than [Ben] does. So we were able to kind of sit down and really dig into it, in a way that I don’t think any other writer could’ve done with me.
Affleck, of course, isn’t new to co-writing: he famously won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay alongside his longtime BFF Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting in 1998. He also co-wrote the screenplays for a number of his own films including Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Live by Night and The Last Duel.
Despite that pedigree, Lopez admitted to the outlet that she hasn’t felt this “on edge about a project in many, many years” but was reportedly comforted by her husband’s presence while filming the intimate project.
Affleck joined his wife at the Elle Women in Hollywood event in Los Angeles, for which she was being honored with her fifth “Icon” award. In the accompanying magazine interview, Lopez proclaimed the merits of films made for women, by women, a sentiment she echoed during her speech at Tuesday’s ceremony.
You understand that the actual magic of being a woman is to be able to do many different things, and do them spectacularly…I will always believe that we can, that all of you can, that I can.
And she will continue to do many different things: catch Jen and Ben in This Is Me…Now: The Film beginning February 16 on the 2024 movie schedule, the same date that the album This Is Me… Now will be released. But note, the “narrative” documentary is exclusive for those with a Prime Video subscription.
Lopez has also announced that the album’s lead single, “Can’t Get Enough” will drop on January 10, 2024 and is currently available for pre-order.