Justice League Director Zack Snyder Thanks Fans For Raising Over $200K For Suicide Prevention

In the time since the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut hashtag and fan movement began, fans of the filmmaker behind Justice League and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The cause, chosen because Snyder's daughter died by suicide during production on Justice League, is near to Snyder's heart, and the director reached out on Twitter today to express his gratitude for the supporters who have committed a not-insignificant amount of time and money to supporting mental health and suicide prevention resources on behalf of his late daughter.

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"The bottom line...you have saved lives," Snyder told his fans via Twiter. "This powerful movement is amazing."

Justice League Part One and Part Two were announced at the same time, with filmmaker Zack Snyder supposedly filming them back to back. That did not last long, though. Snyder eventually, famously, either left Justice League or was forced out shortly after the death of his daughter. But even before that, a set visit during production on the film included quotes that indicated that Part Two was not guaranteed to happen, and might not happen with Snyder even if it did. Conventional wisdom says that before he exited the movie, the plan was to build a trilogy of films, but even at its most bullish, Warner Bros. only announced the two before things started to change. As for Eisenberg, he was built up in Batman v Superman, but appeared only for a few moments in a post-credits scene in Justice League.

When Justice League was released in 2017, with Snyder as the sole credited director of the movie but everyone knowing that Joss Whedon had overseen significant reshoots and dramatically cut the film back from its original runtime to meet studio demands, the film was relatively well received -- as long as the bar you are using for that statement is the one set by other DC movies, which up to that point had been largely hated by critics and divisive among fans.

Its poor box office performance cemented what many fans already expected: Snyder was done with DC films for the foreseeable future, and Justice League Part Two was shelved indefinitely. Cue a movement of fans launching petitions, badgering Warner Bros. on social media, and splitting fundraising resources between showy gimmicks like billboards at Comic Con, and contributions to the AFSP.

In May, HBO Max announced that they would be releasing Zack Snyder's Justice League in 2021, although whether the much-longer cut of the film will be an epic movie or a miniseries in the vein of Watchmen has apparently not yet been determined.