Somehow, the DCEU’s Justice League is still the most talked-about movie on the planet, three and a half years after the first bastardized version of the $300 million blockbuster hit the big screen, only to be savaged by critics and flop at the box office. A haul of over $650 million is something 99% of films would kill for, but given the mammoth production and marketing costs, it still didn’t turn a single penny of profit for Warner Bros.
It snowballed directly into the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement, and even now that Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been out in the world for over three weeks, everywhere you turn the infamous theatrical dud is generating talking points. If it’s not the continued calls to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, it’s even more accusations being levelled at Joss Whedon’s behavior during the extensive reshoots, and screenwriter Chris Terrio has just entered the fray all guns blazing.
The Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice scribe shared the screenplay credit on Justice League with Whedon, but in a new interview, he admitted that he tried to have his name taken off the film before it was released, though the project was too close to the finish line to make it happen.
“I was in L.A. at the time working on Star Wars. I was on the west side of Los Angeles working with J.J. Abrams at the time, and I drove to the studio and I sat down and watched it a couple of weeks before release. I immediately called my lawyer and said, ‘I want to take my name off the film’. The lawyer then called Warner Bros. and told them that I wanted to do that.
Prints had already been struck or hard drives burned or however they deliver movies these days. The elements were on their way, and to remove my name they would have had to restrike the prints or redo the digital copies, and the film could be delayed. It would be an international scandal and news story. So I shut up and I said nothing publicly. I’ve never said anything about Justice League since then, but the movie doesn’t represent my work.”
HBO Max’s four-hour epic is credited solely to Terrio, so we can gather that it’s a much more reflective adaptation of his contributions. In any case, everyone from Terrio and Snyder to the fans and the rest of the DCEU’s directors have long since disowned Joss Whedon’s Justice League, and we’re all much happier now that there’s a bigger, longer and better version of the movie out there, which has finally consigned the misguided first attempt to the history books.
