How Much of Justice League Did Joss Whedon Write?

Ever since Joss Whedon stepped behind the cameras to allow Zack Snyder to take a break from the production of Justice Leagueto spend some personal time with his family, there have been questions about how Whedon’s contributions would be recognized during the movie’s end credits. While the Directors Guild of America is fairly straightforward in their guidelines, making it clear that the directorial would go to Snyder and Snyder alone, there were a number of other areas Whedon could pop up, and thanks to Warner Bros. Pictures’ 2017 Fall Movie Preview press release, we now know that he’ll be sharing the screenplay credit with Chris Terrio.


Due to the number of rumors and behind the scenes changes during Justice League‘s production, there’s been a lot of speculation about exactly the kind of final product we’d get. Some rumors claimed Joss Whedon was brought in to change the tone, others said he was changing the ending, and others said even more massive changes were underway. Whedon’s reputation for quippy dialogue and the lighter tone of the two Avengers movies he directed for Marvel are a bit of a deviation from what Warner Bros. had been doing with the DC Extended Universe, and the abnormal duration of these reshoots only added fuel to those fires.


While a many of the individual rumors don’t hold up, the sheer abundance of them understandably has many people feeling unclear about the true behind the scenes situation with Justice League, and Joss Whedon’s writing credit is now being taken by some fans and members of the media as proof of some of the largest changes Whedon is rumored to be making. On any other film this might not get so much attention, but the polarizing reception Zack Snyder’s previous DCEU films experienced means many people are closely watching Justice League, treating it as a sort of barometer for what can be expected from future DCEU films.


Unfortunately, the set of standards employed by the Writer’s Guild of America aren’t always quite as clear as those implemented by the Directors Guild of America (the two unions are responsible for deciding how creative talent is credited in movies – among many other things), but the guidelines they use to govern movie credits can still give us some insight about Whedon’s true level of involvement and what it means for Justice League.