Ben Affleck Says Justice League’s Course Was Established Before Snyder Left

Justice League‘s story and tone had already been established by director Zack Snyder before he had to step down from directorial duties, according to Ben Affleck. This reiterates that despite Joss Whedon coming in and manning supposedly extensive reshoots, the film remains Snyder’s vision and that numerous rumors of significant changes to tone were exaggerated.

The cast of the first Justice League flick has already started their multi-city press tour to promote the upcoming blockbuster. After kicking things off in China last week, the crew is now in London for the official junket. As they continue to sit down for interviews and media conferences, the actors are not only teasing fans on what we can expect on the DC epic but also shining a light on some of the behind the scenes details of the movie’s production. This includes arguably the biggest shake-up that the film had to deal with – Snyder relinquishing his directorial duties to Whedon for the movie’s reshoots

During the London press conference for Justice League, Affleck reiterates that the film is still is Snyder’s movie. And despite Whedon stepping in and taking over the project, they continued to follow the blueprint that the Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice director had already established before he was unfortunately hit with family tragedy. As for Whedon’s part in all this, the actor says his influence, outside of simply seeing the film to completion, was to add some spice to the already established intent.

“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, one of Justice League’s producers followed on Affleck’s comments saying that regardless of the predicament they were subjected to during the film’s production, he is very thrilled with what came out of it:

“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.”

This backs up the cast’s earlier comments that Justice League is still Snyder’s project and Whedon’s involvement was to merely execute Snyder’s vision. In hindsight, that isn’t that hard to believe, especially, if the two filmmakers had already been in close talks behind the scenes before the whole director switch happened. But at this point, with Snyder getting sole director credit and Whedon getting a co-writer acknowledgment (alongside Chris Terrio), it’s safe to assume that fans won’t be too bothered about this whole sharing of duties thing just as long as the final outcome is well-made and enjoyable, worthy to be the first movie that brought DC’s finest heroes together.

Despite not doing press for Justice League, Snyder continues to cheer his cast and promote the film through his social media. The filmmaker has been sharing behind-the-scenes photos during the film’s production giving us a sense of just how involved he is on the project before he had to ultimately walk away from it.