Justice League director Zack Snyder says an “aggressively anti-Snyder” Warner Bros. is uninterested in continuing his version of the DC Films universe despite the “massive fandom” campaigning to Restore the SnyderVerse. Fans of the embattled filmmaker behind Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice declared Zack Snyder’s Justice League to be DCEU canon after studio executives reportedly referred to the four-hour director’s cut as a “storytelling cul-de-sac,” preferring instead to acknowledge the theatrical cut of Justice League — completed by Joss Whedon and released into theaters in 2017 — as the version that counts in the continuity of its ongoing DC Extended Universe.
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Ann Sarnoff, Chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, appeared to cast doubt on future Snyder-directed DC films when she told Variety that the Snyder Cut streaming release on HBO Max is “the completion of [Snyder’s] trilogy,” despite the filmmaker’s five-film plan that included a Justice League 2 and Justice League 3.
“Warner Bros. has been aggressively anti-Snyder if you will. What can I say? Clearly, they’re not interested in my take,” Snyder told Jake’s Takes when interviewed for his new Netflix zombie movie Army of the Dead. “But I would also say that they certainly weren’t interested in — I would have said originally — in my take on Justice League. They certainly made decisions about that.”
Snyder’s plans, documented in part in the Dreamscapes of Zack Snyder’s Justice League exhibit displayed at the AT&T Discovery District complex in Dallas, would have culminated in a Lord of the Rings-like finale uniting the entire DC Universe against the forces of Darkseid (Ray Porter).
“I love the characters, and I love the worlds, and I think it’s an amazing place to make a movie. It’s glorious IP. So there’s that,” Snyder said. “I don’t know what could be done as you go forward other than I think the fan movement is so strong, and the fan community, [their] intention is so pure, and I really have this huge respect for it. I would hope that cooler heads would prevail with [the studio] and they would see that there’s this massive fandom that wants more of that. But who knows what they’ll do?”
In March, Snyder said on Pop Culture Weekly with Kyle McMahon that there’s “clearly very little chance” he would “ever make another movie with the DCU,” but added any potential Justice League sequels from Snyder would use “a lot of the same elements, but probably a different storyline.”
“I can hope [it continues],” Snyder told McMahon about the future of the so-called SnyderVerse. “It’s not really my [call], it’s not up to me.”
Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Ciarán Hinds, Ray Porter, Joe Manganiello, and Jared Leto, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.
