After a years-long fan campaign, HBO Max is set to stream the mythical "Snyder Cut" of the 2017 DC Extended Universe film Justice League in 2021. While many have steadfastly subscribed to the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement over the years, many others doubted that the director's cut would ever actually actually be released. And as it turns out, director Zack Snyder himself falls into the latter camp.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder admitted that before Warner Bros. Pictures chairman Toby Emmerich approached him about completing his vision for Justice League, he expected his version of the film to go the way of such canceled projects as George Miller's Justice League: Mortal or Tim Burton's Superman Lives. "I always thought it was a thing that in 20 years, maybe somebody would do a documentary and I could lend them the footage, little snippets of a cut no one has ever seen," he said.
According to Snyder's wife and production partner Deborah Snyder, the Snyder Cut seeing the light of day hadn't even been a possibility until rather recently. "With the new platform and streaming services, you can have something like this," she said. "You can't release something like this theatrically, but you could with a streaming service. It's an opportunity that wasn't there two years ago, to be honest."
Over the years, there has been debate and speculation regarding how close the Snyder Cut actually was to completion -- with some believing it didn't exist at all, and others thinking it was actually complete, but was being kept under lock and key for one reason or another. The reality, however, is that Zack Snyder's Justice League does exist, but is far from finished -- featuring no visual effects or post-production.
The Snyder Cut has been kept on a hard drive in the Snyder household. One person who claims to have seen the director's cut describes it as "like a car with no panels, just a drivetrain and some seats." Zack Snyder himself explains, "When we left the movie, I just took the drive of the cut on it. I honestly never thought it would be anything." Reports suggest that Snyder finishing his version of Justice League for HBO Max could cost anywhere from $20 million to $30 million, though neither the director nor WarnerMedia have issued a statement on the matter
As the story goes, in early 2017, Snyder had a vision for Justice League that involved a cut that was nearly four hours in length. Knowing this likely wouldn't fly with Warner Bros, he whittled the film down to just over two hours, subsequently screening that cut for the studio. By this point, both parties agreed much more work needed to be done on the film ahead of its November release. Things took a tragic turn when Zack and Deborah Snyder's daughter, Autumn, passed away in an apparent suicide, prompting the two to step away from the film. Avengers director Joss Whedon -- whom Zack Snyder had previously tapped to aid in the rewriting process -- was then enlisted to take over as director and oversee the post-production process on Justice League.
HBO Max launches May 27.
Justice League stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Ciarán Hinds as Steppenwolf, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon.