Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a moment unlike any before it in the history of cinema. The story of this film is wild. It has been created and chronicled by fans across social media, documented in a ComicBook.com short film, and there is even a novel on shelves in book stores around the world telling people the story of Release the Snyder Cut. After years of fans calling for Zack Snyder‘s original vision for Justice League to be released, the film is headed to HBO Max on Thursday serving as a drastically different version of a movie which went to theaters in 2017 — and one which has hugely improved the property. In bringing the film together following its announcement back in May of 2020, director Zack Snyder and producer Deborah Snyder have been hard at work to complete the vision which also meant filming one additional sequence with half of a dozen cast members.
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“It was amazing because we hadn’t seen everyone in a very long time so it’s a bit of a reunion, although because it’s during COVID you want to grab everyone and hug everyone and instead you have face shields on and masks on, so that made it a little bit more difficult to get done,” Deborah Snyder tells ComicBook.com. “
Of course, nothing seems to come easy for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. In addition to filming the sequence which finaly puts Ben Affleck’s Batman in a scene with the Joker, there were additional obstacles the Snyder family had to overcome to get the scene shot.
“The other thing that made it slightly difficult is not all of the talent was available at the same time,” Deborah Snyder recalls. “We had a ticking clock because that end sequence had so much visual effects, as you saw, that we had to turn the stuff over so we couldn’t wait for all the actor schedules to line up. Jared [Leto] was shot on a separate day. Ben [Affleck] and Ray [Fisher] was shot on a separate day with Amber [Heard].”
Ezra Miller is no stranger to being added into movies. The Flash actor shot a scene for Suicide Squad while on the set of an entirely different movie and did the same here to have his Barry Allen appear in Zack Snyder’s Justice League‘s additional scene. “We ended up shooting Ezra, he was on Fantastic Beasts in London and we had his crew shoot him and then Zack Zoomed in and directed him via Zoom,” Deborah Snyder recalls. “It was pretty nutty. It was also nutty because it was at the time when the unions were still making their arrangements with the studios, following protocols, getting it done, it was hard to just set up the shoot. Now, all those things are worked out. It just another challenge on a journey of challenges on the road of getting Zack’s Justice League made.”
The scene offers both a sense of completion and a tease of what could be if this SnyderVerse continues in DC stories. “I wanted to do this one scene like frankly that there was two things like I’ve spent, you know a lot of time thinking about you know the Knightmare world of in my version of the DCEU and frankly a lot of time looking at the landscape of a post Darkseid invaded world and what that would mean and how to fix it,” Zack Snyder said. “I think that what I really wanted… so I had all the details like that, the cast of characters all that I really wanted to, like, I wanted to flesh it out. Also, I felt like a confrontation between Batman and Joker was a thing that we needed, like everyone needs that, that’s important. That’s fuel. Jared graciously as well as the rest of the cast, Ben and everyone else, said, ‘You know what, let’s do this little scene. I think the fans deserve it.’ And I think it really kind of gives you a nice shape to the to the world to come.”
With Zack Snyder’s Justice League having successfully been won by the fans who rallied for it, not only is there already a rally cry to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse and continue with this version of the DCEU but there is a desire to see David Ayer’s original vision for the Suicide Squad movie released in 2016. “All I know is look what these fans did to get this movie, which was a lot more complicated and there’s so much to be done to get this version done, so I think anything is possible,” Deborah Snyder says.
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