DC fans might be taken aback to hear that Zack Snyder doesn’t consider his films in that franchise to be part of the SnyderVerse, a term lovingly created by fans to refer to Snyder’s involvement with the DCEU.
Snyder was initially a central figure when Warner Bros. first launched its DCEU, with the director originally envisioning a five-movie arc in the franchise.
When rubber hit the road, however, Snyder was only able to direct the first two movies, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. When it came to the third installment, 2017’s Justice League, Joss Whedon took over directing duties halfway through production after Snyder had to suddenly leave due to a family tragedy.
However, after years of fans lobbying for Snyder’s version of Justice League, and the pandemic arguably creating the marketplace to release the film successfully over streaming, HBO Max finally released Zack Snyder’s Justice League earlier this year, to critical and commercial success.
The film has reignited fans’ calls for Warner Bros. to restore his so-called SnyderVerse, or in other words, letting him complete his initially planned five-movie arc.
But as Snyder himself has recently said in an interview with Inverse, he doesn’t view his DC films as part of a SnyderVerse, but instead hopes fans give that moniker to his own original intellectual properties, such as his still-forming Army of the Dead franchise on Netflix.
“I would hope that anything Snyderverseian is [whatever] we’re doing as original IP. The DC universe is something that’s very close to my heart and something I spent a lot of time developing and thinking about, so I love it. But where I am right now is with the Rebel Moon of it all and the Army of the Dead of it all. They’re very much consuming our creative output. Hopefully, just anything that we’re doing that’s original and cool would fit into that category,” Snyder told Inverse.
The forthcoming follow-up to Army of Dead, Netflix’s prequel film Army of Thieves, will be released on the streaming platform Friday.
Do you think DC should restore Zack Snyder’s vision of planned superhero films?