After Zack Snyder stepped away from his duties as the director of the Justice League after his family suffered huge tragedy, former Marvel Studios filmmaker Joss Whedon stepped in to take over.
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Fans have wondered how the first film featuring DC Comics’ premiere superteam would be affected. Whedon, who previously signed on to direct the Batgirl movie, has his own sensibilities as a director that are wholly distinct from Snyder’s tactics. Would he be making an entirely different movie?
According to Forbes’ writer Mark Hughes, Whedon is still sticking to the plan laid out by Snyder.
On the Superhero News podcast, Hughes detailed what Whedon is overseeing on the shoot, debunking the rumor that they are filming an entirely different ending than what Snyder already shot.
“They haven’t said ‘oh, we need to add additional [photography] – we need to do a whole bunch more,’ or anything like that at this point, so, the footage and the amount of footage in the film, as of right now, the majority of the footage that you’re going to see on the screen is still the footage that was previously shot during principal photography.”
‘Reshoots’ or ‘Additional Photography’?
Hughes went on to talk about what is being added, and much like the Wonder Woman reshoots from Patty Jenkins they’re only adding footage to clarify or streamline or flesh out certain scenes.
He also spoke about the terminology and the differences between phrases like “reshoots” and “additional photography,” which carry meaningful connotations when it comes to productions of this magnitude.
“They are doing… it’s not an insignificant… amount, it’s mostly new footage, the reshoots – and some people insist the terminology doesn’t matter and that “reshoots” is common [sic], well no, the terminology does matter to people that make movies and know what these things are, and it matters if you’re saying something’s a “reshoot” when it’s not a reshoot – that matters,” Hughes said.
“But to the extent that that’s just a technicality, the shoots and reshoots combined that are happening and then the also pickups to fill some stuff in is not going to be the majority of the film and it’s not going to be some huge vast portion of the movie.”
So all of those reports of Justice League being unwatchable and Whedon doing a complete overhaul to “fix” the movie could be blown out of proportion.
Enough Time?
But that might leave some wondering why it’s taking so long?
“As of right now, despite the fact that there’s been some extended time and it’s like ‘ok, if this is still – why are they still doing shoots on this,’ there’s been a lot of downtime in between shooting because of people’s schedules – they have not been shooting this entire time. The amount of content that has been shot and is being shot is still pretty much what they expected and figured was going to be happening,” Hughes said.
Fans should keep in mind that Justice League’s cast is filled out with in-demand actors. In fact, it’s kind of amazing that Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot have the most open schedules, but that could be due to their personal circumstances at this time.
But Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, and Henry Cavill are all busy shooting other movies.
It helps that Miller’s Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 2 and Momoa’s Aquaman are both under the Warner Bros. banner, but Cavill’s primary gig at this point is shooting Mission: Impossible 6. They might have caught a break there with that production being temporarily shut down due to star Tom Cruise suffering an unfortunate injury, but the shoot is still at the mercy of the actors’ schedules.
“I know I’ve seen people worried and say ‘why is it taking so long,’ it’s because this is post – this is reshooting and filming that requires people’s schedules to line up, getting things in order, so it has not been as easy as they expected it to be when this was all being planned months ago,” Hughes said.
Justice League
It sounds like Justice League isn’t the chaotic disaster some rumors would have you believe.
We’ll get to find out for ourselves when the movie premieres on November 17.
Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.
