The story of the Snyder Cut itself sounds like something out of a Hollywood film with fans coming together to campaign for filmmaker Zack Snyder‘s full vision for Justice League to be released. That hard-won day is finally here with Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuting on HBO Max on Thursday, March 18th, but it turns out that there is another origin for the so-called Snyder Cut. While fans were trying to draw awareness with the hashtag “#ReleaseTheSnyderCut”, Snyder himself was initially ready to just walk away and be done.
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Snyder being ready to just be done should be no surprise to those who know even a little about the saga. Snyder was replaced on Justice League following the death of his daughter, Autumn, but as the filmmaker explained earlier this year, there was a little more to the story. The combination of his family’s tragic loss, as well as clashes with the studio over the film, left him tapped out and, as he explained in an interview with The New York Times, he really was just done.
“And the truth is, I was in such a place of desperation I didn’t care. You know what? Good riddance to Justice League,” Snyder said. “I was like, ‘Guys, really? You’re going to give me a hard time? Let’s go. I’ll fight you right now.’ [Laughs]. I was not in the mood for that kind of thing. I felt like we had done a great job, and the movie was done, even the two-hour-and-20-minute version that the studio had knocked me down to.”
He continued, “Almost every movie I’ve ever made has a director’s cut. When I said, ‘OK, I’m done’, I [told] one of the editors I worked with [Carlos Castillón]: ‘Put it together as best you can and give it to me.’ A bunch of my inner-circle buddies who worked on the movie always talked about, ‘Oh, maybe we just drop a thumb drive somewhere and let a fan [he makes air quotes] find it’. And I was like, ‘that’s funny but I think it’s better if it just lives as this thing that no one will ever see. I’ve lost my appetite for the fight.’”
Clearly, a lot has changed since then. Now, there’s not only the four-hour Zack Snyder’s Justice League that fans will get to enjoy later this week, but he’s also put together a black-and-white version called the Justice Is Gray Edition of the film as well.
“I’d like to shoot a black-and-white movie at some point. We’re finishing right now the black-and-white version of Justice League, and it’s called the Justice Is Gray Edition,” Snyder told I Minutemen. “That’s what I call it. Justice League: Justice Is Gray Edition. It’s not black-and-white as they say (laughs). But that’s the name of the black-and-white version.”
In Zack Snyder’s Justice League, determined to ensure Superman’s (Henry Cavill) ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) aligns forces with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) with plans to recruit a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat of catastrophic proportions. The task proves more difficult than Bruce imagined, as each of the recruits must face the demons of their own pasts to transcend that which has held them back, allowing them to come together, finally forming an unprecedented league of heroes. Now united, Batman (Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and The Flash (Ezra Miller) may be too late to save the planet from Steppenwolf, DeSaad, and Darkseid and their dreadful intentions.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuts on HBO Max on Thursday, March 18th.
