One day, film historians will study the long and winding saga of Justice League. It might be a comic book blockbuster with a total budget of roughly $370 million after Zack Snyder finally put the finishing touches on his original vision, but the story has been so full of unexpected twists and turns that it’ll generate interest for decades to come.
The Director’s Cut is hardly a new phenomenon, but inviting back a filmmaker who departed halfway through production and handing them a sizeable chunk of change to completely re-edit the movie without using a single frame shot by their predecessor, add an all-new score and visual effects, assemble several cast members for reshoots and double the running time over three years after it was first released is completely unheard of in Hollywood history.
Of course, it’s a widely accepted fact that the only reason the Snyder Cut exists is because Warner Bros. knew it would generate huge publicity and buzz for HBO Max, not to mention a massive spike in subscriber numbers for the platform. Indeed, it would be safe to say that if HBO Max didn’t exist, then neither would Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
The studio brass were never sold on the idea of having the director return to the project, but they eventually acquiesced when they realized there was money to be made. And tipster Mikey Sutton is now claiming that WB leaked the J.J. Abrams Superman reboot news to deliberately draw attention away from Justice League on social media as they aren’t exactly big fans of it.
“They simply want it to go away,” says Sutton. “The J.J. Abrams news was deliberately leaked to bury The Snyder Cut in social media prior to its release on HBO Max. I won’t say Warner Bros. is trying to sabotage The Snyder Cut; I’m not going that far. Nevertheless, The Snyder Cut is being treated like the last kid asked out to the prom.”
While that sounds like self-sabotage to a certain extent, if you’re in for the Snyder Cut then you were in a long time ago, and nothing’s going to change that. However, the Superman speculation could easily distract more casual audiences who remain on the fence, and after the rumors that the all-new Justice League left the boardroom feeling underwhelmed and unimpressed, the studio might just want all the talk and hype to be over and done with.
