There’ve been plenty of movies ruined by studio interference before, but it’s rare for said studio to then turn around and make a big deal of releasing the director’s original vision. But that’s what’s happening with Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which is finally debuting on HBO Max this month, almost three and a half years after the theatrical edition of the DC team-up film came out. Fans might be thrilled about it, but it sounds like embarrassed Warner Bros. execs are not sharing the hype.
According to scooper Mikey Sutton of Geekosity, execs are “not impressed” with the Snyder Cut, which restores all of what the filmmaker shot back in the day that was thrown out by reshoots director Joss Whedon, meaning it takes the form of a four-hour epic. Despite the positive buzz surrounding the Justice League re-release online, WB higher-ups are said to still be unhappy with it as they never liked what Snyder was doing in the first place.
Sutton claims it was WB’s parent company AT&T that picked up on the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign, saw an opportunity to cash in on the buzz and demanded that it be put into action. With its release imminent, WB apparently has a serious “lack of faith in the project” and “simply want it to go away.” Sutton even says that they dropped the news that J.J. Abrams is working on a Superman reboot last week to pivot attention away from the Snyder Cut.
While we advise taking this with a grain of salt for now, it’s clear that Justice League isn’t a major priority for the studio by where they’ve placed it on their release schedule. It’s out this March 18th, just a couple of weeks before Godzilla vs. Kong drops on March 31st. That doesn’t really give Snyder’s movie much of an opportunity to make an impact before another highly anticipated blockbuster comes along. After all this, though, it’ll certainly be interesting to see how the pic goes down when it arrives later this month.
