Not every shared universe needs a Kevin Feige figure to spearhead and oversee development, but at the very least it needs to have a core creative team in place to ensure everything ends up pulling in the same direction. That obviously hasn’t been the case for the DCEU, though, and still isn’t if the SnyderVerse discourse is anything to go by, with the Warner Bros. executives gaining a reputation for meddling in their own projects ever since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice officially launched the interconnected mythology.
From what we can gather, Man of Steel largely went off without a hitch behind the scenes, presumably due to it being designed as a standalone Superman movie at the time. From there, though, the grubby fingerprints of studio interference are all over the DCEU. Zack Snyder admitted that WB hated Batman v Superman and in a new interview, writer Chris Terrio revealed his belief that by ordering 30 minutes to be cut from the film, the higher-ups essentially sabotaged the final product that hit theaters.
“If you took 30 minutes out of Argo, as they were from Batman v Superman, it would make zero sense at all. Critics would say, ‘What a lazy screenplay’, because the characters don’t have motivations and it’s not coherent. And I would agree with them.”
Of course, those missing minutes were restored for the Ultimate Edition, which is unsurprisingly a vastly superior version of Batman v Superman. It was hardly an isolated incident, either, with Patty Jenkins confirming that the underwhelming CGI-heavy showdown between Diana Prince and Ares in Wonder Woman wasn’t her call, and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was infamously butchered beyond recognition.
Then there’s the debacle surrounding the theatrical edition of Justice League, along with Birds of Prey director Cathy Yan saying that she didn’t have final cut on the Harley Quinn spinoff, and it was actually John Wick‘s Chad Stahelski who ended up helming reshoots on the film to punch up the action. So, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice suffering at the hands of the studio is hardly uncharted territory.
