Justice League: HBO Max Ad Reveals Another New Title For the Snyder Cut

In a newly-released ad for HBO Max — one touting Wonder Woman 1984 as well as the platform’s slate of new and upcoming originals — a quick shot from Zack Snyder’s Justice League may have revealed a new title for the project. The title — Justice League: Director’s Cut — would remove Snyder’s name from the title, disappointing his fans. If this is indeed what the current thinking at Warner Bros. is, it’s likely they assume Snyder fans will check in regardless, and want a name that the general public will understand. While Zack Snyder, and the fight for creative control of Justice League, is a familiar story in geek circles, it has hardly any cache in the outside world.

The question of what Snyder’s cut of Justice League will finally be called when it hits HBO Max has been out there since it became a reality. “The Snyder Cut” is the name that gained internet fame as fans bombarded Warner Bros. in an attempt to get it released, and then it got Zack Snyder’s Justice League in the press release announcing that it was going to happen. Shortly after that, rumors started to circulate that WB was looking for a different title for the release, although everything since then has retained Snyder’s name in promotional materials.

You can see the new ad below.

Snyder had completed an “assembly cut” — a rough cut of the film that’s barely edited, but mostly just all the footage shot so far, strung together into an outrageously long version of the movie — when his daughter passed away. Shortly after that, the film was taken over by Marvel’s The Avengers director Joss Whedon, who slashed much of Snyder’s content and replaced it with reshoots that clashed wildly with Snyder’s footage in tone and look.

The resulting movie was a mess, and moviegoers and critics punished it for a lack of direction. While Snyder’s grounded, violent approach to superhero movies had drawn criticism from some fans and underperformed relative to the massive expectations set by movies like The Dark Knight and The Avengers, they turned a modest profit and managed to get the next movie, and then the next, greenlit. The franchise effectively stopped dead with Justice League, which didn’t make remotely close to its money back, and felt like a case of trying to please everyone, but compromising and instead pleasing no one.

The movie will get another shot with Justice League: The Snyder Cut/Zack Snyder’s Justice League/Justice League: Director’s Cut, which is expected to debut on HBO Max in March.