Actor Henry Cavill’s poor CGI mustache cover-up in 2017’s Justice League became a point of joke for the audiences. The use of CGI to remove Cavill’s mustache was so imminent that it was pretty easy to make out which of Superman’s scenes were reshot.
Director Zack Snyder decision to pull out from Justice League during the film’s production resulting in Joss Whedon’s entry into the scene. Whedon reshot a major portion of the film that almost tweaked the film’s story. The reshoot required Cavill to remove his facial hair which he had grown for his role in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. But, unfortunately, Paramount did not let Cavill shave for the Justice League reshoots. So, Warner Bros. had to ultimately resort to CGI to remove Cavill’s mustache.
During a recent interview with Empire for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that after talking to Justice League producer Charles Roven, he along with producer Jake Myers agreed to halt MI 6 filming to let Cavill shave his mustache and shoot for the film.
“When the question came – the reshoots for Justice League came out – [Charles] Roven called me, and he said, ‘We need your help and we need to shave Henry [Cavill]’s mustache. We need him to come back and we need to do these reshoots,’” McQuarrie said. “And I said, ‘Look, Chuck, naturally I want to do everything I can to help you, but I also have to think about our production. Let me talk to everybody and figure out what the scheduling would be.’ And I went and spoke to Jake Myers, and the suggestion was made through channels that we shave the mustache and Henry could begin to grow the mustache back and that then there would be – they would give us the resources to digitally fill in Henry’s mustache. Because like it or not, a fake mustache in close-up on a 75mm lens is never going to look like anything but a fake mustache.”
The Mission: Impossible – Fallout director added that Paramount Pictures was against the idea of digitally adding in Henry Cavill’s mustache. So, the final decision taken was as per the film studio’s covet.
“So, we offered the following compromise: Jake Myers calculated the amount of money that it would take to replace the number of shots, and essentially what Jake was able to project was about a $3 million visual effects budget. So, I don’t know how much Henry was in Justice League, I’ve never seen the movie, but I can tell you how much it would’ve cost for Mission: Impossible to digitally add Henry Cavill’s mustache, and we said yes. We said, here’s what we’ll do: give us the $3 million and we’ll shut down, and that will give Henry Cavill the time to grow his mustache back, and we’ll just shut our movie down. …We said we’ll do this, at which point, somebody from Paramount Pictures said, ‘What is going on? What are you people even talking about?’ They’re like, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that.’ We were just like, ‘Okay.’ That was the best plan that we could come up with.”
The end result was definitely not in favor of Justice League which failed at the box office. The DC superhero team-up movie only managed to gross $229 million domestically and $656 million worldwide.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is currently running in theatres.
Source: Empire
