Affleck calls Justice League reshoots career low, says Snyder's daughter's death was used as excuse

Mixed · 2Ben Affleck said on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast that the reshoots of "Justice League" were the "low point of my career". 1 2 Mixed · 2He said Zack Snyder's removal from the film and the reshoots were "shitty". Affleck said the way the death of Snyder's daughter was, in his view, "used as an excuse" was "one of the shittiest things I've ever seen". 1 2 Mixed · 2Snyder had stepped away from the 2017 film after his daughter Autumn died by suicide during post-production, and Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon, whose reshoots ran about two months. 2 1

Left · 1Affleck said the experience was negative partly for personal reasons: he said he was drinking too much and got divorced. He said those things did not affect the movie. He also said the on-set atmosphere, which he mostly heard about secondhand from other actors, was "about as gross as it gets". 1 Mixed · 2Affleck said he learned "how not to make a movie like that", where the studio is at odds with the filmmaker, and that he was "gratified" Snyder got to release his own version, which came four years later. 1 2 Centre · 1/Film wrote that Affleck confirmed what it had heard at the time, that Warner Bros. used the suicide to install Whedon. The quoted remarks refer to the death being "used as an excuse" and do not name individual executives. 2

Left · 1Variety added context: Snyder estimated in a recent Variety interview that Whedon's reshoots covered 60 new pages of material, the film was a critical and commercial misfire, and Gal Gadot later accused Whedon of threatening her on set, which he denied. Affleck had earlier told Entertainment Weekly the film was "a nadir experience" that made him stop wanting to play Batman. 1 Mixed · 2In the same interview, Affleck said Lucasfilm approached him about directing "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and that he declined. /Film added that he cast Ray Fisher in his new film "Animals". 1 2