When Justice League was released in 2017, it was after a series of extensive reshoots courtesy of Joss Whedon. The movie was lambasted by critics, but still earned $657.9 million at the box office. That was a solid result, but way less than Warner Bros. was expecing given the characters involved and the sheer amount of money they'd spent on making it.
One of the biggest issues, of course, was that when Henry Cavill had to return as Superman for Whedon's reshoots, he was rocking his Mission: Impossible - Fallout moustache (which Paramount Pictures would not let him shave off for fear of causing problems with that movie's production). Visual effects were used to remove it, and the results...well, they were horrifying.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, producer Charles Roven reflected on where it all went wrong.
"We were hoping for Henry to shave his beard. We were very worried that we weren’t going to be able to accomplish that in a way that wasn’t visible. And in fact we were right to be worried about that," he admitted. "To open a movie with your Superman and have his face look funny – I wouldn’t say that was one of the great decisions that were made. But it was a decision that was made because of many other things, as opposed to protecting the movie."
"It was a decision that was made to protect a release date, all of the promotional partners who were tied into that release date, all of the theaters that had booked things around that release date. The fact that Imax was tied into that, that it was Christmas, that it would mean a lot of revenue for Warner Bros. at that particular time. They had no big, huge Christmas blockbuster to replace it with."
It's no secret that Warner Bros. execs pushed for Justice League to be released that November because they were looking to protect their bonuses, but even if Cavill's face had looked normal, it really wouldn't have made the movie much better! It might, however, have rescued the actor's relationship with the studio as the embarrassment of the whole situation might well have factored into him not returning as the Man of Steel.
As of right now, his Superman future remains uncertain, and it looks Warner Bros. is moving on without him.