Justice League: Max Removed the Snyder Cut in Europe And Nobody’s Quite Sure Why

Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been removed from Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service in Europe, with some fans speculating that it has to do with a music licensing issue, while others suspect it’s just more content removal by the penny-pinching parent company — either to avoid paying residuals to the talent, or just to save money on server space. The removal comes not long after the movie’s trailer was removed from Max’s YouTube channel, with Warners telling ScreenRant that it was due to a music licensing issue — something that has happened before, although back then it also impacted their U.S. YouTube account.

At this point, Zack Snyder’s Justice League remains on Max in the US. The practice of removing content from streaming platforms in order to write them down for tax benefits has become the immediate worst-case scenario whenever something disappears from a streaming platform, but it’s likely impossible for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. That’s for a number of reasons, including the fact that you can buy this movie digitally or on disc, meaning that it’s easy to measure a precise, quantifiable dollar amount that has definitely been made on the Snyder Cut. That’s much difference from streaming exclusives, where studios can claim they didn’t make any money to speak of.

This is more likely comparable to something like Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs, which was removed from Max but is still available to buy on Vudu and Prime Video. It’s likely such removals are aimed at either licensing the project to another streamer for a quick buck, or prepping for a FAST service (free, ad-supported television — basically the internet version of traditional TV).

When Justice League was released in 2017, with Snyder as the sole credited director of the movie but everyone aware 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. After years of fan pressure, Warner Bros. decided to allow Snyder to finish his film, releasing it to what was then known as HBO Max in 2021.