There’s been a sense of drama residing over the production of November’s Justice League. One of the biggest shakeups occurred when director Zack Snyder had to step down to deal with a death in his family. Joss Whedon stepped in to finish the movie. This left some fans wondering how much of the finished product will be Zack’s vision and how much will be Joss’s.
As the cast begins press junkets to promote the film, it’s a question that will likely come up more than once. At a London press conference, Ben Affleck reiterated that it is still Snyder’s movie and even with Whedon stepping in, it still maintains Snyder’s blueprint. According to the actor, Whedon saw the film to completion and added a little spice to the intended story.
“The movie is Zack’s DNA. He cast the movie, designed the movie. There’s something I think people don’t understand who don’t actually work on movies, which is how much work is done in prep. How much, you know, the casting, the sets get built, the story was written, the ship is, in essence, sailing. I’ve found as a director you can maybe 10 percent, 15 percent or something on the day, so you really have Zack’s ship set sail with us and we were fortunate that when Zack was not able to continue we got really lucky in that we got a guy who’s very accomplished in his own right, and particularly in this genre, and he kind of sprinkled some of his fairy dust on our movie and finished it. I don’t think there’s any way to go back to look and say ‘That’s a Joss scene’ or ‘that’s a Zack scene.’ It was more they were working together toward a common goal even better than I would certainly, but I get a sense that Joss was working from what he had discussed with Zack before he stepped in.”
Charles Roven, a producer on Justice League added:
“It’s just been a great privilege and fun to work with Zack and Debbie and all of the actors in various films starting with Henry with Man of Steel and then Ben with Batman v Superman and Henry and then Gal on Wonder Woman, and then the whole team together right now, it’s been, you know, a, in a wonderful way a great learning experience and life experience and with Zack, not to have Zack there as we’ve been saying, but to have Joss come in, he’d already been working with Zack, and now we’re just really happy with the movie and really happy with the dynamics of what we’re doing and how great these characters, you know, infused by this talent have made these characters and we’re really happy to be sharing it with everybody.”
Snyder will get sole director credit and Whedon will get a co-writer credit with Chris Terrio. As long as the movie is good, fans should be pleased either way.
Justice League hits theaters on November 17th.
