Zack Snyder loves making movies that arguably run for a little longer than they need to. One of the recurring criticisms of his upcoming Netflix effort Army of the Dead is that it doesn’t really have to go on for 148 minutes, and that’s without even mentioning the fact that he’s already directed three of the four lengthiest comic book adaptations ever made.
HBO Max’s 242-minute Justice League, Watchmen‘s 216-minute Ultimate Cut and the 183-minute Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition are all marathons, but at least each one is much better than their respective theatrical releases and benefited from the extra padding. Insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that the filmmaker wants any Justice League sequels to be at least three hours long as well, which is a statement that opens itself up to a number of questions.
Snyder already admitted he has the stories for the second and third chapters all figured out, but it’s not as if he’s going to be making them given his recent comments on the fractured relationship he’s got with Warner Bros., bringing an end to a fifteen-year partnership. He could say that he wanted his Justice League follow-ups to run for 75 minutes, ten hours or anything in between, but none of it would cause the studio to budge from their hard line stance that the SnyderVerse is over.
It’s not as if Justice League 2 and 3 have scripts, either, and it would be a strange thing to mandate a three-hour runtime for a pair of blockbusters that don’t exist and more than likely won’t be given the green light unless things drastically change at WB on a boardroom level before a single word has even been written. Then again, the entire saga has been truly bizarre from start to finish, and based on nothing but the sheer volume of speculation, it’s set to rumble on for a long time yet. So, who knows, Snyder could well get the chance to make his super long sequels at some point.
