Zack Snyder’s Fight With WB Over Green Lantern Almost Cancelled Justice League

In the aftermath of HBO Max’s Justice League, repeated comments from Zack Snyder have painted the picture of a man who was always battling against the Warner Bros. hierarchy, despite spending fifteen years in their employ.

Not only did he admit that the studio hated Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, with writer Chris Terrio going on to state his belief that they sabotaged the movie, but there was also pressure on the director to make Justice League more light-hearted and comedic, long before he departed the project in the midst of production.

Since then, Snyder has revealed that the disagreements continued right through the editing and reshooting of his four-hour cut, with the inclusion of Wayne T. Carr’s Green Lantern a particular point of contention. The actor shot scenes against a green screen in the filmmaker’s driveway, before the execs vetoed John Stewart’s appearance, with Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter taking his spot instead.

In a new interview, Snyder dived into greater detail about Green Lantern making a cameo in Justice League, and he even tried to play the multiverse card before eventually backing down after realizing that this was one fight he couldn’t win without walking away altogether.

“When we had this fight, I was like, ‘Guys, I don’t understand. We have this whole thing of the multiverse, you have this whole like universe, who cares?’. I just think the right end of this movie is John Stewart, that’s the correct ending to happen. By the way, I don’t want to take anything away from Harry and away from Martian Manhunter, because it’s cool. Seeing him early and then seeing him at the end, its cool, it kind of completes his story. But it was always my intent to have John Stewart meet Batman.

Even if there’s no other movies, it would make sense for the movies to come that John Stewart would say, ‘The Green Lantern Corps is going to come fight with you against Darkseid because we need to do that. Your guys aren’t gonna make it without us. We’re powerful allies in this’. To me, it was like a no-brainer. But it was a very serious fight that I was in.

To me, it wasn’t worth doing it to Wayne, like blowing up the whole movie, because it was that close, over it. And then have everyone be like, or have Wayne feel like, ‘Oh sh*t, I canceled the whole movie because Snyder wouldn’t budge’. And I just felt like, ‘Okay, f*ck it. I’m gonna just let it go’. And Wayne was great in the thing.”

It did lead to a minor online campaign for the Snyder Cut of the Snyder Cut, but by all accounts, we won’t be seeing Carr’s Green Lantern realized in all of his glory. It just goes to show, though, that after spending years trying to have his original vision for Justice League released to the masses, WB were still intent to ensure that the 300 and Watchmen director played by their rules right up until the very end.