Ben Affleck calls the “Justice League” reshoots the lowest point of his career, and he accuses Warner Bros. of exploiting a family tragedy to push out director Zack Snyder. Affleck made the comments on Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, while promoting his new Netflix film “Animals.” “The experience of Justice League was so, so negative for lots of different reasons,” he said. Some of those reasons, he said, were personal, and some traced to the tragedy that struck during production.
That tragedy was the death of Snyder’s daughter, which led the director to leave the 2017 film. Warner Bros. then enlisted Joss Whedon to direct reshoots, which changed the film’s tone and story sharply, and allegations of mistreatment of actors by Whedon dogged those sessions. Affleck called the studio’s handling of Snyder one of the worst things he has seen, and said it was “so gross.” He argued the studio used the loss as an excuse.
Affleck framed the episode as a lesson. He said he saw how not to make a movie, with a studio at odds with the filmmaker, and called that a mistake. He said he was glad Snyder got to release his own version. That cut, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” reached HBO Max in 2021 after a fan campaign. Affleck returned for it, and the director’s cut received a far warmer response than the theatrical release, which flopped critically and commercially.
The remarks extend earlier comments. Affleck told Entertainment Weekly that making the film was a “nadir experience” that made him not want to keep playing Batman. He has tied that period to heavy drinking and a divorce. He said he loved playing the Frank Miller-inspired version of the character. After a brief cameo in “The Flash” in 2023, he stepped away from superhero roles.
