In between the theatrical edition of Justice League being released and the announcement that HBO Max were finally making the Snyder Cut a reality, Zack Snyder was very careful to ensure that he didn’t publicly support the various fan campaigns in any official capacity.
Sure, he worked his way around it by revealing a ton of behind the scenes photos and still images from the footage he’d shot before departing the project, as well as confirming on numerous occasions that there was indeed a much longer and very different version of the pic that existed in some form, but he was hardly tweeting #ReleaseTheSnyderCut every other day.
In a new interview, the filmmaker revealed that the reason why he never lent his support in a more substantial fashion is because he thought it would end up with him getting sued by Warner Bros. As well as admitting his concerns over any potential legal action, Snyder also addressed the more rabid and toxic sections of the fandom that would tear down anyone opposed to the Snyder Cut at any opportunity by praising the ones who donated a lot of money to good causes.
“I was more worried the studio would sue me. Do something to silence me. Here’s the reality, that fandom raised $750,000 for suicide prevention and mental health awareness. They’ve saved lives. That’s a fact. But on the other hand, was it fun to provoke them? For a clickable thing? Yes. And they were an easy target. But they continue to raise money. There are not a lot of fan communities whose primary objective, other than seeing work of a guy they like, realized their other main thing was to bring awareness to mental health and suicide prevention. For me, it’s kind of hard to be mad at them.”
Presumably, the reasons why Snyder remained so silent on the entire #ReleaseTheSnyderCut saga until HBO Max gave it the green light were legal and contractual, because almost as soon as his brand new Justice League was officially in the works he was everywhere, giving countless interviews to as many print and online publications as possible, and it would have most likely been a breach of his original agreement with the studio had he been out there blasting Joss Whedon’s effort at every available opportunity prior to that point.