Why Justice League Wasn’t Released as a Miniseries on HBO Max for the Snyder Cut

The Snyder Cut of Justice League might have been broken down into six chapters, but the four-hour project wasn’t officially broken down into an episodic experience, as Zack Snyder recently detailed to Deadline that there would be legal semantics in changing the distribution format of the project. As most audiences could tell you, there are sometimes semantic delineations between what is considered a series vs. a limited series, which already raises enough questions, with Snyder noting that the conversion of the sprawling project from one epic into a segmented experience would come with a number of unintended ramifications behind the scenes.

“Frankly, I think that there was some legal rumbling about the dividing up of a movie into four parts, and does it become a TV show, and does it void all the contracts,” Snyder confirmed to the outlet. “And I was like, ‘Look, guys, I don’t want to become … this sounds like we’re going to get in the weeds on this, and it’s a disaster, so let’s just not make legal precedent out of this movie, and I’ll just stick to my four-hour opus.’”

Another reason the project was unveiled as one massive adventure is that Snyder’s original plan was to release Justice League in theaters, with those chapter breaks merely making it a more digestible experience for the big screen, even if they were designed to be consumed all at once.

“It was always to be completed as one theatrical release, because it was made as a four-hour film. Now, remember, the film is chaptered anyway. It’s like, part one, ‘Don’t Count On It Batman’, and then about 40 minutes later – I forget exactly – part two, ‘The Age of Heroes’, and then on and on,” Snyder shared last year with IGN‘s Fan Fest. “That was the way the film was created just in my mind as the way it was easily digestible. There was so much and I just felt like this kind of chapters as you went forward was really the best way to absorb it.”

He added, “It was always going to be finished as a single film but then I thought, ‘Oh, it might be fun to break it up.’ But that just got complicated and everyone started to get nervous about whether or not it was contractually this or that. I said, ‘You know what? It’s fine. The four hours, it’s a great way to watch the movie, and it’s easy to pause and go hit the potty or pick up some popcorn or whatever, whatever you got to do, because it does have those chapters.”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.

Do you wish the project existed as a miniseries? Let us know in the comments below!