We are just about one month away from the day that Zack Snyder fans have been anticipating for years now (literally). That’s right, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is expected to hit HBO Max in March and with it, the conclusion of behind-the-scenes drama dating back to 2017. But for those fans expecting a version of Snyder’s “Justice League” with all sorts of reshot footage from the famous additional photography session last year, you’re out of luck. As Deborah Snyder explained on the LightCast podcast, those much-publicized reshoots bringing back many of the “Justice League” characters together (including adding Jared Leto’s Joker) is only going to add about four minutes of new footage.
READ MORE: ‘Zach Snyder’s Justice League’ Trailer: The Ultimate Director’s Cut Has A Little Joker
During the interview, Snyder stressed just how labor-intensive the upcoming Director’s Cut of “Justice League” has been. No, not because of the reshoots, but because the film has ballooned to four hours in length and they had thousands (yes, THOUSANDS) of visual effects shots that were required in about six months.
“The running time is just about four hours,” she explained. “If you think about it, about how much extra time that is, and then you think about how visual effects-heavy these superhero films are, we had to do, in six months, 2,650-some-odd visual effects shots. And normally, when you do these movies, what happens is, as you’re shooting, you start turning over shots. Listen, we had a lot of assets built, but I think the way the theatrical release was done, they changed a lot of things. And through the process, as we were working on the movie, [there were] some of the things they wanted Zack to change, some of the designs of the characters. So, we want back to the original intention, of Zack’s intention, in terms of the characters and had to rebuild those models. But then there were just so many shots to do.”
Snyder added, “Visual effects [people] wanted a year to get it done, and [WB] said, ‘We’ll do it, but we want it by the end of March.’ I think it was the beginning of March actually. And we were like, ‘Okay! We’re just going to figure it out!’”
So, the vast majority of the time being spent by Snyder and his production team isn’t on new footage. In fact, it was on the 2,650 new visual effects shots and undoing what WB originally wanted. But of course, fans were hoping that the reshoots meant that Snyder would be adding additional story to the film. That’s not what happened, per Deborah Snyder.
“People kept thinking, ‘Oh, they went and shot so much more stuff’ and I go, ‘We literally shot one scene, like one additional [scene]. I shot three days here. That’s it. That what we captured.'”
The additional scene is reportedly the infamous Knightmare scene that was teased in ‘Batman v. Superman’ and never really shown in “Justice League.” The reshoot brought back Ben Affleck, Ezra Miller, Amber Heard, and also Jared Leto to the film. And it wasn’t as simple as just inviting people back on set. In fact, with Miller, there was a whole different challenge.
READ MORE: Zack Snyder Is Developing A “Faithful Retelling” Of The King Arthur Legend
“It was also weird because Ezra [Miller] as shooting [‘Fantastic Beasts at the time] and he’s in the scene,” explained Snyder. “So, we shot him remotely. Zack Zoomed in because he was on ‘Fantastic Beasts.’ Luckily, their crew is amazing they were like, ‘We’ll help you!’ So, we got a green screen and they had a camera feed and a Zoom. He got to direct Ezra via Zoom and we put him in.”
“Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is expected to hit HBO Max on March 18.
By the way, some of the new Zack Snyder’s Justice League” score by Junkie XL is out and you can listen to some of it here.
