Zack Snyder went over WB’s head to add Martian Manhunter to the Snyder Cut

Zack Snyder’s Justice League gets its long-awaited digital release today, and someone high up at Warner Bros. clearly isn’t happy that it continues to be a hit. A “confidential report” was leaked from the studio and summarized in an article in Rolling Stone, which dubs Snyder as “Lex Luthor” and alleges that the massive online campaign to get the movie released was driven by bots rather than humans.

One eyebrow-raising allegation concerns the inclusion of classic DC hero Martian Manhunter. Snyder had always intended Harry Lennix’s Lieutenant Calvin Swanwick to have been Martian Manhunter in disguise, adding in Easter Eggs hinting at his alien origins as far back as Man of Steel. In the Snyder Cut, he finally got to pay that off in a late scene showing J’onn J’onzz revealing himself to Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne.

The Rolling Stone article alleges DC Films president Walter Hamada and Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff were adamant that this scene should be cut, and that in response, Snyder threatened to “delete other footage if he didn’t get his way”. Snyder denies he would have ever done that, adding that even if had wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to.

Snyder then went over Hamada’s and Sarnoff’s heads and made his case to their boss, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar. Kilar seems to have not only overruled the Warner Bros. executives, but also granted Snyder $13 million in production costs to complete the movie. An anonymous insider wails that it was unfair for “a director’s cut of a film that already lost hundreds of millions” to be given more money while people were losing their jobs at the studio, but as Snyder points out:

“The studio never would have released my version of Justice League unless it made financial/business sense for them.”

As Zack Snyder’s Justice League was a big hit, seeing impressive long-term viewing figures and driving subscriptions to HBO Max, it seems Kilar was right to bet on Snyder.