Ben Affleck Calls Justice League Reshoots "The Low Point of My Career," Slams Warner Bros. for Using Zack Snyder's Tragedy as an "Excuse"
While doing the press rounds for his new Netflix thriller Animals, Ben Affleck didn’t mince words about his turbulent tenure as the Snyderverse’s Dark Knight. In a recent appearance on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the actor and director reflected on the disastrous production of Justice League, citing heavy studio interference, a toxic on-set environment, and the gross mistreatment of director Zack Snyder as the primary reasons he walked away from his planned solo Batman film.
Affleck’s standalone movie was originally slated to be an Arkham Asylum-based story featuring Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke. However, his experience watching Warner Bros. executives clash with Snyder completely killed his enthusiasm for sitting in the director's chair. “I really saw how not to make a movie like that, which is when the studio is at odds with the filmmaker,” Affleck explained. "You know, starting at the worst possible, you’re really making a mistake. And, you know, that was what really doomed that."
The situation severely deteriorated when Snyder stepped away from the film following the tragic death of his daughter. Affleck heavily implied that studio brass used the director's immense personal tragedy to wrest control of the picture and mandate massive reshoots. “Somebody’s death by suicide, that eclipses everything," Affleck said. "And then the way in which that was, I thought frankly, used as an excuse, I just thought was one of the shittiest things I’d ever seen.”
The subsequent reshoots—helmed by Joss Whedon—radically altered the film's tone and created a notoriously hostile workplace. While Affleck noted he wasn't personally present for every incident, he acknowledged the widely reported mistreatment of his co-stars. "The whole environment and vibe, much of which I wasn’t privy to, but that I sort of heard about secondhand in terms of Ray [Fisher] and Gal [Gadot] and other people’s experiences," he recalled. "It was just like, wow, this is about as gross as it gets."
Ultimately, the chaotic production severed Affleck's desire to continue leading the franchise at that time. "Boy, that was sh*tty, that him being taken off that movie and the reshoots that we did," he admitted. "If you want the low point of my career, was that... The truth is that the experience of Justice League for me was so, so negative for lots of different reasons."