Ben Affleck is quickly becoming a Warner Brothers favorite.  With The Town (which Warner Bros. distributed) garnering approximately $50 million at the box office as of last weekend and with it enjoying even greater critical success (currently rocking a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes), the studio has now offered Affleck the director's chair for the L.A. crime drama Tales from the Gangster Squad.  The script, penned by Castle writer and former L.A. cop Will Beall, tells the story of an off-the-record gang of LAPD officers who attempt to force legendary gangster Micky Cohen out of town in the late 1940s.  The script draws substantially from the 2008 series of articles, also entitled Tales from the Gangster Squad, written by Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Lieberman.

As for Affleck, we recently reported that he had discussed directing (along with most every other director in the known universe) The Man of Steel for Warner Brothers but had dropped out of the running.  According to Vulture, the momentum-inclined director is also mulling over the possibility of directing Howard Gordon's (24) Showtime pilot Homeland as well as a "two-hander at Warner Bros. that might star his old pal Matt Damon."