Rarely does a million-dollar blockbuster lose its director in the middle of filming. Much less, he is allowed to make his own version of the film a few years later
The DC Universe (DCU), the new film franchise about DC Comics characters, is showing promise: James Gunn and Peter Safran were announced in 2022 as the new people in charge of a necessary new stage that would mark the end of the previous one, what we previously knew as the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), and, although we have had to wait a bit, the first fruits are beginning to be seen. To start with, the first film in the franchise, supermanfilming is already underway with David Corenswet as the new character in charge of playing the Man of Steel and other new and promising projects have already been announced that include other characters such as Supergirl or Swamp Thing.
Regarding the previous stage, although in the so-called DCEU there were always successful films such as Aquaman -which surpassed 1 billion dollars- and notable productions such as Wonder Womanthe reality is that, in general, the attempt to take advantage of Marvel’s success and replicate it in the DC universe did not achieve its objective.
One of the best examples of the bad result is found in League of Justicethe first film that brought together the team of superheroes that made up the franchise and that brought together Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa and a long etcetera in front of the cameras in the skin of Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Aquaman , respectively.
However, while the movies The Avengers In the MCU set one record after another, the 2017 DC superhero reunion was a disappointment for most fans and more especially at the box office, where it grossed more than 600 million dollars, which is not bad at all but fell far short of forecasts.
League of Justice will always be remembered for a fact never before seen in a blockbuster of this magnitude: no one had imagined that a film with a budget of 300 million dollars aimed at being a true phenomenon in movie theaters would lose its director during production, much less that he would later have the opportunity to put his original vision into practice.
The also director of Batman V Superman, Zack Snyder, was replaced by the director of The AvengersJoss Whedon, during the filming of League of Justice after the former had to leave work following a sad family tragedy. However, the change was not well received by fans who already began to ask for the first director’s version. Finally, Snyder was allowed to do Zack Snyder’s Justice Leaguewhich premiered in 2021.
If you’ve always wanted to watch both movies at the same time or compare them directly, you can do so in one Double session at Max: both League of Justice as Zack Snyder’s Justice Leaguewith a duration of more than six hours (2 hours the first version and 4 the final version by Snyder) and a total budget of 370 million dollars. The only chance to see how different the two films are from each other, even though they actually tell the same story:
Following the death of Superman (Henry Cavill), humanity is on the brink of disaster as Earth has lost its most powerful protector. Alien conqueror Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) is out to seize the moment and attempt to get his hands on three powerful artifacts, the so-called Mother Boxes. But Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) are already working on assembling a team consisting of The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher).
