JUSTICE LEAGUE Will Begin Filming Next Month

Comic book movie fans have waited a long time for this moment.

Entertainment Weekly reports that Justice League — Part 1 is set to begin filming on April 11th in Iceland and England, with Zack Snyder directing. That's less than three weeks from now, and Snyder is reportedly already in the UK prepping the shoot. Many expected Justice League — Part 2, which has a 2019 release date already scheduled, to film back to back with Part 1 (which will arrive on November 17th, 2017), but that's not happening. Part 2 will shoot separately at a later date. Here's a statement from Snyder:

"The idea that we could begin to boot up a Justice League concept was a cool thing. It was a little bit of an ‘about time’ moment, and I don’t blame [the studio] for feeling that way, because it's a long time coming. But I do feel like it’s a little bit of a creative hurdle. It seems like an easy thing to do at first glance, the idea that, ‘Oh, we just get the rest of the superheroes in there.' But you have to [establish] a world where they can exist.
The studio really wants us to try and pace it up, as far as — now we have an idea where we’re going."

Back in 2007-2008, Mad Max director George Miller nearly had a Justice League movie up and running before the Writers' Strike, but delays in acquiring tax rebates caused the project to ultimately fall apart. That film is supposedly going to be the subject of a documentary, if Warner Bros. allows it to move forward. 

Drew McWeeny at HitFix recently reported that he had heard rumblings from his sources inside WB that some people there had finally seen Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I'm paraphrasing his report, but he basically indicated that the people he'd spoken to who have seen the movie weren't as thrilled with it as they hoped they'd be, and they were actually a little worried about it — so much so that McWeeny speculated that Snyder may not end up directing Justice League, and that the film may get pushed back in order for Ben Affleck's new solo Batman movie to slide up on the release calendar (Affleck's Batman, along with Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, are reportedly two of the aspects of Dawn of Justice that work very well).

I trust McWeeny's reporting, and just because this announcement proves that Snyder is still directing and Justice League is still on track, this shouldn't be taken as a confirmation that Dawn of Justice is a home run. After more than a two year wait following Man of Steel, we'll see how DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. handle the pressure of jumping into a larger cinematic universe when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice officially arrives in theaters on March 25th.

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