This has been a week that’s seen the stories surrounding Joss Whedon’s time as the fill-in director of Warner Bros’ Justice League get more interesting as time has gone on. What started as a simple rescinding of support given to the director by one of the film’s stars, Ray Fisher, had quickly turned into allegations of “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable behavior” being displayed on the set of the 2017 would-be blockbuster. And now, those allegations have been soundly denied by one of the two alleged “enablers” of such behavior, producer Jon Berg.
Responding to Ray Fisher’s accusations, Berg stated to Variety that these claims of malfeasance on the Justice League set were “categorically untrue.” Dispelling those rumors in a fashion he felt was satisfactory, Jon Berg then went on to discuss one particular clash that Fisher had with one particular request made of the actor during Justice League’s production:
I remember [Fisher] being upset that we wanted him to say ‘Booyaa,’ which is a well-known saying of Cyborg in the animated series.
At this moment, there has been no response to a request for comment from Warner Bros. representatives, and Joss Whedon has, at this time, no comment. But already, fans and spectators alike have to wonder what the exact circumstances of these Justice League bombshells entail. Depending on who you ask, this couldn’t have come at a better or worse time in the news cycle for that particular film.
With Zack Snyder’s Justice League bringing this infamous cinematic product back to the public consciousness, there’s obviously going to be even more questions about how the originally intended vision we’re going to witness differs from the changes Joss Whedon was hired to make in Snyder’s absence from the project. And it looks like Ray Fisher is preparing to field some of those questions preemptively by recanting his previous support for Whedon, with an additional side of tea to be spilt presumably at a yet-to-be-determined future point in time.
To borrow a phrase from historical proceedings that feel similar to those we may see visited upon Justice League’s troubled production, it’s now going to be a question of who knew what, and when. Ray Fisher probably isn’t the only cast member that has the goods on what may have happened during Joss Whedon’s time on the film, and if there are indeed stories to be had, we’re going to have to wait and see if anyone else comes forward to confirm or deny this account of events.
In either case, HBO Max is about to get a lot of free publicity, not only for the theatrically released version of Justice League, which will remain on the platform through this December, but also for the upcoming Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which will be online at HBO Max at some point in early 2021.
