Zack Snyder's 'Justice League' Reshoots Will Result In Only A Few Minutes Of New Footage

When news of Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League coming to HBO Max was first announced, it was said that the director wouldn't be bringing back any cast members to shoot new scenes. But the streaming service changed their mind as we learned back in September that Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Ray Fisher would be coming back as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg to shoot footage for the director's cut of the DC Comics superhero movie. That made us think the reshoots would be fairly substantial, but according to Zack Snyder himself, the reshoots will only add four minutes or five minutes of new footage.

Zack Snyder sat down for an interview with Beyond the Trailer (via Collider), and he explained how much new footage there will be in his cut of Justice League from these reshoots. Snyder said:

"I will say that in the end it's going to probably be about four minutes or five minutes of additional photography for the entire movie. In the four hours that is Justice League, maybe four minutes."

Back in September, we learned that these reshoots would cost roughly $70 million. Did HBO Max really spend that much money for just a few minutes of footage? What exactly did they reshoot that would cost that much money and take up such little screen time? Was it merely so expensive because it required bringing back the primary cast to shoot new scenes? These are all questions that we don't have answers to yet, and we may never get them.

Even though Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot and Ray Fisher were the only members of Justice League said to be coming back for these reshoots, it turns out Ezra Miller also shot some footage as The Flash. But he wasn't actually on set with Zack Snyder to complete those reshoots. Instead, Snyder directed Miller's scenes remotely, and they were shot on the set of Fantastic Beasts 3 across the pond. Snyder explained (via CinemaBlend):

"I had to get a pick-up shot of Ezra when we were doing this little bit. You know, he's on Fantastic Beasts, and that's in London, and we weren't going to travel to London, unfortunately. I would have loved to have done that... So what we did was we picked him up on a Zoom, and the Fantastic Beasts crew, I sent them these drawings. I was like, 'Ok, this is what he has to do, this is where he is.'"

As we previously heard, Snyder also brought back Jared Leto as Joker for some new footage. When the Suicide Squad version of Joker returns to the big screen, he'll look a little different from the last time we saw him:

"I wanted to of course honor what had been created with him because I thought it was really cool. But also, in this, I'm not going to tell you what happens in the little scene, but some water has gone under the proverbial bridge between when last we saw Joker and this appearance. So he's made some...he's a road-weary Joker, I guess that's a way of saying it."

We're not exactly sure what that means or why this scene is so integral to the director's cut of Justice League when it wasn't something that Zack Snyder originally shot when he was still in charge of the production. It was always said by the The Snyder Cut's strongest supporters that the movie was complete with the exception of unfinished visual effects, but clearly there was more that Snyder wanted done to complete his vision. Will it be worth the wait when this four-hour miniseries version of Justice League arrives on HBO Max? We'll find out next year.