Former Warner Bros. co-president of production Jon Berg has fired back at Ray Fisher’s allegation that Joss Whedon was unprofessional on the set of Justice League, claiming that he and fellow executive producer Geoff Johns did not, as Fisher says, enable any unprofessional behavior on the set of the failed tentpole movie. He went on to diminish Fisher’s concerns, painting the actor as grousing over minor creative differences as opposed to the much larger issues that Fisher has presented as he complained about Whedon’s time at the helm of the film over the course of the last few days on social media.
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The comment represents the first official response to Fisher’s comments, as Whedon previously declined to comment. Johns has not yet had anything to say about the allegations, but tends to absent himself from controversies when he can and seems unlikely to addess it right away.
Berg told Variety this afternoon that it was “categorically untrue that we enabled any unprofessional behavior, adding that “I remember [Fisher] being upset that we wanted him to say ‘Booyah,’ which is a well known saying of Cyborg in the animated series.”
When filmmaker Zack Snyder left Justice League following the death of his daughter, Whedon was presented as a close friend of Snyder’s who had been called in by the director personally to put some minor finishing touches in place on the movie. All along, rumors dogged the film that Whedon had been asked to “save” a film that executive had no faith in, and that he was making radical changes. Later, reports claimed that Whedon had been brought in to do rewrites and adjustments on set even before Snyder left.
When the movie came out, it was pretty clear to most viewers which portions had been shot by Snyder, and which were shot by Whedon; the pair’s radically different visual, cinematic, and narrative styles did not mesh well the movie felt fractured as a result. The cast largely refrained from criticizing anyone involved with the production of the movie, but in the time since its November 2017 release, it seems clear that Snyder had a great working relationship with the Justice League cast and that his departure had an impact on the mood on set. Fisher, though, is the first to lash out against Whedon directly, saying on social media yesterday that he wanted to “recant’ comments he made in support of Whedon at Comic Con in 2017.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League, an expanded and remastered version of the movie presented as Snyder had originally envisioned it, is sheduled for a 2021 release on HBO Max.
