“Worst of my career”: Ben Affleck hated shooting Justice League without Zack Snyder

“One of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen…” Ten years later, the actor reveals his truth about Joss Whedon’s takeover of the film.

He did not have good memories of Justice League.

Podcast guest Happy Sad ConfusedBen Affleck returned to the reshoots of the DC film, taken over by Joss Whedon after the departure of Zack Snyder, and described them as “worst experience of his career“. A particularly difficult period, marked both by tensions on the set and by personal trials.

In 2017, in full production of the competing blockbuster AvengersWarner Bros. had entrusted the new shots to Whedon, after Zack Snyder had to step away from the project following the death of his daughter. His successor then shot the equivalent of 60 new pages of script, completely distorting Snyder’s original vision. The result was a big critical and commercial failure for the studio:

“The experience of Justice League was so negative for a lot of different reasons, some of which had to do with my personal situation at the time and some of which had to do with the tragedy that happened at the time.says Ben Affleck. “I saw how not to make a film like this, when the studio disagrees with the filmmaker. This is really a mistake. I was very happy and relieved that Zack was able to release his version (via the Snyder Cut). It was fucking awesome! I was really happy for him.” And Ben Affleck insists:

“It was disgusting, to have this film taken away and to do these reshoots. If you want to know the worst moment of my career, this was it.”

For the Hollywood star, the suicide of the director’s daughter should have stopped everything:

“Someone’s death by suicide overshadows everything else. The way this tragedy was, in my opinion, used as an excuse (to replace Zack) is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. It was so disgusting.”

Ben Affleck then remembers the noxious atmosphere that reigned on the set while Joss Whedon had been signed to take over the project:

“The whole atmosphere on set during the reshoots – a lot of which I didn’t witness directly, but I heard about it from the other actors – it was just, ‘Wow, this is reaching a pretty incredible level of grossness.“

Going to the end of his confidences, the actor admits that he too was in bad shape personally, when he had just separated from Jennifer Garner:

“I was drinking too much… and I was going through a divorce. It was a personally difficult time for me, but those things, as painful as they were, had no impact on this film“.

Ben Affleck had already described the filming of Justice League like an experienceat the bottom of the hole“, in a previous interview given to Entertainment Weekly. At the time, he explained that this adventure had convinced him to no longer want to play Batman: “I didn’t like being there. I didn’t find it interesting. And then some really shitty things, horrible things, happened. That’s when I said to myself: I’m not going to do this anymore.”