Warner Bros/Joss Whedon/Ray Fisher Justice League

[Coal Tiger]

He's still being purposefully vague here, but we have slightly more indication of what his complaints are. "Racist conversations" and "massive blowups, threats, coercion, taunting, unsafe work conditions, belittling, and gaslighting like you wouldn’t believe." The cast was also apparently lied to and tricked into lying about Joss being Snyder's choice.

“You really have to ask yourself, what’s more plausible—that I would purposely torpedo my career by making statements about powerful figures in Hollywood, that, if untrue, could be easily refuted. OR a handful people in positions of power said and did terrible things in order to maintain that power during a massive corporate merger.”

It's not a bulletproof argument, but it's compelling. Given Momoa's statement of support, I see no reason to believe that some impropriety didn't go down. We just have to wait and see exactly how much and of what nature.

He's still covering his ass by not making any specific accusations, this isn't some noble self-sacrifice for his ideals. I'm sure he was just pissed about his part being reduced and no one listening to his script revisions. When he complained, someone probably told him to shut up if he wanted to continue having a career, because in hollywood, people don't hire unknowns who have a reputation for being difficult. I also have little doubt that Whedon/Johns/the rest of the producers talked some **** about Snyder when he was gone, and it rubbed the Snyder loyalists (Momoa, Fisher) the wrong way. While true that PoC got their parts reduced or erased, so did Willem Dafoe and Ray Porter. Amber Heard got her role reduced to just one scene. They had to cut over an hour from the movie and some scenes and side plots had to go.

At the end of the day, Hollywood probably is just an old boys network of guys all covering for eachother and their bad behavior, but how much consideration should be given to the 6th tier member of the cast who is a complete unknown?

[manwhohaseverything]

A little adjustment:



Since this is a comic book forum I felt it was fitting to put it in those terms.

Yeesh! That's one heck of a statement.

[achilles]

He doesn’t have “it”? Wow. The actor/character, who was set to be “the heart” of the film, who had the bulk of his scenes removed is being judged by his stripped back body of work. *shrugs* Henchmen gotta hench I guess.

If you can't tell how good an actor is without seeing him in a starring role....well, u definitely shouldn't be a casting director. "It" is on show within just a few moments. It's kind of like what the wrestlers say, roughly that it's better to have the crowd vigorously booing you than being silent. He was never getting over with the crowd. Take another example, Harrison Ford as Han. Within just a few seconds of his appearance, everyone knew who the real star of that movie was. And he continued to hold audiences as Indy. Ditto with Sam Jackson...it really almost doesn't matter what role he plays, you're just going to want to watch him doing something. I never got that with Fisher.

[OpaqueGiraffe17]

The more I hear, the lower my opinion is of everybody who worked on this movie. Both sides.
they all seem like a bunch of assholes.

[achilles]

He's still covering his ass by not making any specific accusations, this isn't some noble self-sacrifice for his ideals. I'm sure he was just pissed about his part being reduced and no one listening to his script revisions. When he complained, someone probably told him to shut up if he wanted to continue having a career, because in hollywood, people don't hire unknowns who have a reputation for being difficult. I also have little doubt that Whedon/Johns/the rest of the producers talked some **** about Snyder when he was gone, and it rubbed the Snyder loyalists (Momoa, Fisher) the wrong way. While true that PoC got their parts reduced or erased, so did Willem Dafoe and Ray Porter. Amber Heard got her role reduced to just one scene. They had to cut over an hour from the movie and some scenes and side plots had to go.

At the end of the day, Hollywood probably is just an old boys network of guys all covering for eachother and their bad behavior, but how much consideration should be given to the 6th tier member of the cast who is a complete unknown?

It's entirely possible he might not be either making it up, or describing real events. He may well think decisions were made on that basis because things didn't go the way he thought they would. He might simply be interpreting events the way he thought they were, which might be why he's a bit short on details...

The other two possibilities I see are that he's telling the truth, and there's some secret racist conspiracy at WB, in which case, I expect evidence to be forthcoming sooner or later as I highly doubt WB to be competent enough to keep such things secret forever. That being informed by their movies.

And of course the final being that he's lying entirely for some reason.

[Lightning Rider]

He's still covering his ass by not making any specific accusations, this isn't some noble self-sacrifice for his ideals. I'm sure he was just pissed about his part being reduced and no one listening to his script revisions.

I don't get why you're sure about that.

[Coal Tiger]

It's entirely possible he might not be either making it up, or describing real events. He may well think decisions were made on that basis because things didn't go the way he thought they would. He might simply be interpreting events the way he thought they were, which might be why he's a bit short on details...

The other two possibilities I see are that he's telling the truth, and there's some secret racist conspiracy at WB, in which case, I expect evidence to be forthcoming sooner or later as I highly doubt WB to be competent enough to keep such things secret forever. That being informed by their movies.

And of course the final being that he's lying entirely for some reason.

I don't think he's lying, I think he's making assumptions and assigning motivations to people that fit the narrative that he's constructed. I think it's much more likely that WB execs came to their senses and realized that they had a movie with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in it and decided to make them the focus rather than the relative unknown actor and character - than a bunch of execs having a secret plan to ruin the career of someone who has literally never been in a movie before.

[Coal Tiger]

I don't get why you're sure about that.

I dunno, because if he wasn't pissed about going from the most important character in the most expensive movie Warner Bros has ever made to being like the 6th most important member of the cast with greatly reduced screentime, there would be something seriously wrong with him. I have zero doubt that he genuinely believes he was treated incredibly poorly.

[Iconic]

If you can't tell how good an actor is without seeing him in a starring role....well, u definitely shouldn't be a casting director. "It" is on show within just a few moments. It's kind of like what the wrestlers say, roughly that it's better to have the crowd vigorously booing you than being silent. He was never getting over with the crowd. Take another example, Harrison Ford as Han. Within just a few seconds of his appearance, everyone knew who the real star of that movie was. And he continued to hold audiences as Indy. Ditto with Sam Jackson...it really almost doesn't matter what role he plays, you're just going to want to watch him doing something. I never got that with Fisher.

So clearly “it” was on display to the guy who picked him for the role. When said guy leaves and the new guy doesn’t care for what the first guy saw in him and proceeds to nuke his entire arc, you take that as him not having “it”.

With all the behind the scenes stuff that went on, you don’t think it’s plausible that they intentionally further nuked his appearance so that when you watched the film he wouldn’t seem to have “it” to someone of your high quality viewing skills?

You. Didn’t. See. His. Arc. Of. The. Movie.

Anyone can take a film with Tom Hanks and edit it to the point that he’d look like a weak actor. He had no control over the cut. Jared Leto had no control over the cut. Ben Affleck had no control over the cut and he looked terrible compared to his previous Batman role.

But look. I understand. Henchmen gotta hench. Can’t have superheroes without’em.

[Jack The Tripper]

This is such a weird situation, and honestly, I just want something to come out that just ends the discussion. Unfortunately, due to how Fisher has gone about this, it seems very biased - I wish more of the actors that were there would step up in agreement IF what Fisher is saying is true. Honestly it just sounds like an actor being salty about the director and producers being in charge of the movie. If there was some evidence or more people coming to back up what he was saying it would be fine, but it's pretty much just him. Even Snyder didn't go out of his way to slam them before the Snyder cut was announced.

[Holt]

UPDATE:

Forbes has now edited the article and removed the quote about the alleged skin lightening. Whedon's legal representation has also responded for the very first time.

However, later in the day, an incendiary quote attributed to Fisher was removed from the story and Forbes added an editor’s note at the top of the article that read: “This story has been updated from its original version, including the wording of the original headline.”

Whedon, the director who replaced Zack Snyder on Justice League to oversee reshoots, had stayed silent amid multiple claims made by Fisher this year. However, on Thursday, an attorney for Whedon and spokesperson for the director issued multiple statements in regard to the Forbes story, particularly about the removed quote.

"Mr. Fisher had no first hand knowledge to support any of the wild allegations he made about Mr. Whedon and others associated with the film," an attorney for Whedon said in a statement. "He admitted this lack of knowledge to Forbes when stated that he 'bec[ame] informed,' of these claims, without identifying who supposedly informed him, or when he supposedly learned of the information regarding skin tone changes. In reality, nothing of the sort ever happened."

Whedon’s spokesperson elaborated on the editing process for Justice League, noting: “As is standard on almost all films, there were numerous people involved with mixing the final product, including the editor, special effects person, composer, etc. with the senior colorist responsible for the final version's tone, colors, and mood. This process was further complicated on this project by the fact that Zack shot on film, while Joss shot on digital, which required the team, led by the same senior colorist who has worked on previous films for Zach, to reconcile the two.”

Stefan Sonnenfeld, the president of imaging shop Company 3 whose work ranged from The Mandalorian to Black Hawk Down, was the senior colorist for the movie. He was worked with Snyder on movies such as 300, Sucker Punch and Man of Steel. THR reached out to Company 3 for comment but did not hear back.

This is about to get ugly. Whedon might sue over that claim now.

Does Geoff get residuals from Courtney and Simon?

They’re still DC owned characters, right?

DC has an incentive program where creators are, in theory, supposed to be given compensation for when their characters are adapted into other mediums (I say in theory because some creators like Gerry Conway have complained about WB purposefully making the process strict and confusing).

So yes, he does get money from Stargirl and will most likely be getting money from Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz being used in the upcoming Green Lantern TV show (as well as any of his other creations like Larfleeze or Atrocitus).

[Iconic]

Can’t wait for the Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

[achilles]

I don't think he's lying, I think he's making assumptions and assigning motivations to people that fit the narrative that he's constructed. I think it's much more likely that WB execs came to their senses and realized that they had a movie with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in it and decided to make them the focus rather than the relative unknown actor and character - than a bunch of execs having a secret plan to ruin the career of someone who has literally never been in a movie before.

I would agree that this makes the most sense.

[kjn]

This is about to get ugly. Whedon might sue over that claim now.

Can he? Yes. Will he? I guess not, at least not if WB gets to decide.

The real danger for WB is the discovery process. While a lot of the stuff that's been going on is likely to be spoken word communications, I really doubt that WB—or Whedon—wants to give Fisher the opportunity to ask for all their internal written communications during the Justice League reshoots that relates to every actor of colour.

[Holt]

Can he? Yes. Will he? I guess not, at least not if WB gets to decide.

The real danger for WB is the discovery process. While a lot of the stuff that's been going on is likely to be spoken word communications, I really doubt that WB—or Whedon—wants to give Fisher the opportunity to ask for all their internal written communications during the Justice League reshoots that relates to every actor of colour.

If there is damning written evidence of Whedon and the WB higher ups telling the SFX team "I don't like looking at all these black people; make 'em lighter" then yes, that would be a concern. But somehow I doubt that's the case here. The fact that Whedon finally spoke up and said "No, that categorically did not happen" after weeks of remaining silent and refusing to address this controversy at all, and Forbes ended up rescinding that accusation would indicate that at the very least he's confident that Fisher can't actually prove that.