It would have cost $3 million to allow Cavill to take time off from Mission: Impossible filming to reshoot Justice League cleanly shaven.
Last year, Henry Cavill’s Mission: Impossible moustache hit the headlines after the actor was told to shave it off for Justice League re-shoots whilst he will still filming for Mission: Impossible.
The producers of Mission: Impossible, Paramount Pictures, refused to allow Cavill to shave his moustache for reshoots as a cleanly shaven Superman.
Cavill has played Superman in three DC films to date, 2013’s Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and last year’s Justice League.
Warner Brothers were instead forced to remove Cavill’s moustache via CGI in post-production. However, in the resulting film, Cavill’s upper lip was blurry, with many fans noticing the strange effects.
Now, in an interview with Empire’s Film Podcast, Mission: Impossible – Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie has revealed what exactly happened between Warner Brothers and Paramount over the moustache debacle.
McQuarrie first described what happened when Justice League’s director, Charles Roven, called him. “[He said] we need your help and we need to shave Henry’s moustache. We need him to come back and we need to do these reshoots.”
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His response to Roven was to help initially: “I went and spoke to Jake Myers [Mission: Impossible – Fallout producer] and the suggestion was made through channels that we shave the moustache and Henry could begin to grow the moustache back and that…they would give us the resources to digitally fill in Henry’s moustache.”
McQuarrie reportedly did not want Cavill to use a fake moustache because of the type of camera – 75mm – that the film was shot on. He said: “a fake-moustache in close-up on a 75mm lens is never going to look like anything but a fake moustache.”
Myers went away to calculate the cost of replacing the shots and the figure came in at an eye-watering $3 million.
McQuarrie agreed to accept the $3 million and shut down the production of Mission Impossible to allow Cavill the time needed to regrow the moustache. However, Paramount had other ideas.
“Somebody from Paramount Pictures said: ‘What is going on? What are you people even talking about? There’s no way we’re going to do that,” McQuarrie explained. “We were just like, ‘Okay. That was the best plan we could come up with.”
Earlier this year, Cavill paid tribute to his moustache after it was shaved off via a tongue-in-cheek Instagram clip.
Earlier this month in an interview with NME, Simon Pegg spoke about the drama behind the moustache. You can watch what he said here:
Read more at https://www.nme.com/news/heres-true-cost-henry-cavills-cgi-moustache-2363020#sXAML8mM5dOtFu8y.99
Justice League failed to make significant headway at the Box Office, despite it’s huge $300 million budget.
Read more at https://www.nme.com/news/heres-true-cost-henry-cavills-cgi-moustache-2363020#sXAML8mM5dOtFu8y.99