With Justice League only weeks away from hitting theaters, it was inevitable that there would be discussion about the transition of directing duties from Zack Snyder, who stepped away from the film due to personal tragedy , to Joss Whedon, who handled directing reshoots.

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DC Extended Universe: Every Upcoming Movie 26 IMAGES

At a press conference at the film's London junket, star Ben Affleck and producer Deborah Snyder spoke out about the transition between the two directors, and why, in their minds, Justice League remains Snyder's movie."The movie is Zack's DNA," said Affleck, who reprises his role of Batman/Bruce Wayne from the Snyder-directed Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. "He cast the movie, he designed the movie. People, I think, don't understand who don't work on movies, which is how much work is done in prep. The casting, the sets get built, the story is written, the ship is in essence sailing."I've found, as a director, you can maybe change 10 percent, 15 percent on the day," Affleck continued. "You really had Zack's ship set sail with us. We were fortunate when Zack was not able to continue, we got really lucky in that we got a guy who is very accomplished in his own right in the genre, and he kind of sprinkled some of his fairy dust on our movie and finished it. I don't think there's any way to go back, for me, and say, 'That's a Joss scene.' They were both working together toward a common goal. ... I got the sense Joss was working from what he had discussed with Zack before he stepped in."

Snyder has spoken out about how he hasn't been checking in on Justice League since he announced in May that he would not be completing the film. His producing partner and wife, Deborah Snyder, spoke to press about how the experience of being at the movie's junket to herald its upcoming release is "so bittersweet."

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"I think for us, this whole thing is so bittersweet because we had been working on this franchise for this past almost eight years when we started developing the script for Man of Steel, and we moved on to BvS and also Zack developed the story for Wonder Woman, which was leading up to the point of Justice League, where these characters were finally going to come together," she said. "This was a really great hero's journey, and a journey for these characters to be the characters who they are today. So not being able to complete his vision was extremely difficult, so that makes it hard."We were lucky that we had Joss already working on script pages. Our feeling is that we're hoping that people don't think about how the movie is made when they see it because these characters are bigger than any director. They're bigger than any of us, and we love and adore these characters and we love and adore all these people here."In the finished film, Snyder receives sole directing credit, while Whedon receives a co-screenwriter credit with Chris Terrio . Justice League hits theaters on November 17th.

Terri Schwartz is Editorial Manager of Entertainment at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz