The now-notorious “Justice League” reshoots, which wanted to accommodate the success of this summer’s “Wonder Woman” among other things, cost Warner Bros. upwards of $25 million. After director Zack Snyder departed the project following a family tragedy, ‘Avengers‘ helmer Joss Whedon was tasked to take over the production and “fix” the film which meant significant rewrites and reshoots.
Of course, those reshoots spanned this year’s best/worst drama, the meme-worthy mustachegate: Superman with a hairy upper lip. As infamously reported, Henry Cavill‘s facial hair was a major issue for the “Justice League” filmmakers as the actor had since grown a major mustache for “Mission: Impossible 6,” and Paramount, the studio behind the film, would not allow Cavill to shave his ‘stache in order to reshoot his scenes as Superman for “Justice League.” Out of options, Warner’s figured the only alternative they had was to just digitally remove the facial hair in post-production.
READ MORE: Warner Bros. Spending $25 Million On ‘Justice League’ Reshoots
If you’ve experienced the film and seen the hilarious new memes, you know the results were rather disastrous. You don’t even need to look close to see the botched CGI which look like Superman was punched in the face and proved to be quite the distraction for many. Well, it appears that Warner Bros. tried one more tactic, but failed.
READ MORE: Christopher McQuarrie Explains Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible 6’ Injury
Over on Reddit, the VFX artist LDN Films, in charge of Cavill’s mustache — apparently verified by Reddit — held an Ask Me Anything chat and said the Warner’s offered Paramount the option to digitally create a CGI mustache for the Mission: Impossible film, in return for Cavill to shave the damn thing. Obviously not a simple process, but easier to add then subtract, Paramount still wouldn’t budge.
“To some people it’s a cool little project to get stuck in to and another problem to solve, which is what a lot of VFX is about. Challenging. To me, as a fan, I was annoyed, haha, Paramount should’ve shaved him and stuck a fake one on for MI6. [It was] ridiculously petty of them. We did tests on already shot footage of Superman to add a beard as well to show the ‘MI6’ team at Paramount it was loads easier, and Warner Bros. offered to pay for all the beard adding shots in MI6. They said no.”
The artist was also asked if the CGI’d-in facial hair would have looked better had “Justice League” been delayed to 2018. “It would’ve been seamless,” they responded. Additional claims which will rock fans: LDN Films says there won’t be a Zack Snyder cut of “Justice League” and there won’t be further VFX work done on the home release to clean up and fix the mustache (and apparently there never was a version of Superman in a black suit).
READ MORE: How Warner Bros. Could’ve Fixed ‘Justice League’
Suffice it to say “Justice League” fans didn’t take well to LDN Films’ comments. His post-mortem reads, “90% of messages I got were pretty abusive, and I think sadly for the most part this subreddit is a pretty hostile, adolescent community. Hope the majority of you grow up a bit. To the minority of decent questions and interest in the processes behind these films; cheers!”
What an embarrassing drama this has all been for everyone involved in “Justice League.” But it begs the question: will those ardent, loud ‘JL’ fans boycott “Mission: Impossible 6” or any other Paramount films? At this point in this ridiculous story, anything’s possible.