Update: November 29, 2017
New Report Details Warner Bros.' Greediness Led to JUSTICE LEAGUE Missteps
Justice League had a lot of enemies: a looming corporate merger, a family tragedy, an internal clash between light and dark themes. But its greatest enemy was time.
Few people are happy with the finished project, which one insider called “a Frankenstein” made of the assembled parts favored by rotating executives and directors and which had the worst opening for a DC Comics-based movie in years. But several people who spoke to
TheWrap said the decision to keep the film’s Nov. 17 release date was a mistake — one as plain as Superman’s face.
According to TheWrap, members of Warner Bros. did approach the studio’s president Greg Silverman about removing director Zack Snyder from
Justice League. The call came after
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was met with critical backlash and a fierce box office drop after its promising opening. The site’s source says DC President Jon Berg was ultimately sent to oversee
Justice League for almost a year after budget concerns made higher-ups antsy.
The report goes on to say Silverman was “quite harsh” to Snyder about
Batman v Superman’s flop, but he was given another go at Justice League.
“They were already in deep prep on ‘Justice League’ and it would have cost a fortune. There’s stickiness to a director because there’s so much cost to unstick him,” the insider explained. “Warners is a studio that almost to a fault always wants to project strength.”
As work continued on
Justice League, Warner Bros. is said to have stood by its original premiere date once reports went live about the company merging with AT&T. To move the release of such a film would have been viewed as a weakness, and
Justice League had a lot to prove to audiences and business insiders.
In December, Silverman stepped down as president of Warner Bros. Pictures, and was replaced by Toby Emmerich.
Joss Whedon was then brought in to give the movie more levity under Snyder’s blessing, but things took a turn when tragedy struck the director. Snyder’s daughter died following a suicide attempt, and he ultimately chose to leave the project to focus on his loved ones as in-studio pressure continued to mount on
Justice League. "It stopped being a good situation on any level,” The Wrap's source described.
With
Justice League now in the hands of Whedon, post-production and re-shoots on the film were quickly scheduled to get things in order. The Wrap’s source went so far as to say Warner Bros. executives Toby Emmerich and Kevin Tsujihara didn’t wish to push the movie’s release date as it might have risked their annual bonuses. The time-crunch ultimately forced the film together loosely, and its re-shoots even forced Superman's Henry Cavill to have his mustache digitally removed in post.
New Report Details The Behind-the-Scenes Warner Bros. Drama That Led to 'Justice League'
