Zack Snyder Teases Unreleased Sucker Punch Director’s Cut

With the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max earlier this year, DC fans finally got to see the director's true vision for the film, one with a longer runtime and more detail that resulted in a film that is vastly different than the theatrical Justice League. And it turns out that there's another of Zack Snyder's films that also has a potentially very different director's version -- Sucker Punch. The filmmaker recently told Vanity Fair that there's a director's cut of the 2011 film that hasn't yet been released.

"That is a movie I wrote with my friend Steve Shibuya and Steve and I had been talking about the movie for a long time actually because the movie to me is, you know, people don't acknowledge it, but it's a protest movie in a lot of ways," Snyder said. "It's a movie about genre like I was asked at the time, why did you dress the girls like that and I always go 'I didn't dress them like that, you did.' I always saw it as an indictment of, in some ways, popular culture. I think at the time I was criticized for it being the opposite, like some sort of sexist like, rant, but it was fun to make and I still love it to this day. That was the first time where I really faced like a true radical restructuring of the film for it to be more commercial and there's a director's cut of that movie that has yet to be released. I'll say that out loud."

Sucker Punch follows a young woman named Babydoll (Emily Browning) is committed to a mental institution but enters a fantasy world that she creates to cope with her reality -- specifically, a brothel. Babydoll teams up with four other prisoners/dancers before her scheduled lobotomy in the real world, collecting various items she needs to escape with each item taking her further into the fantasy. The film was a box office failure and was poorly received by critics and audiences alike, with many critics offering some praise for the film's visuals and effects but noting the film to be lacking much in the way of characterization and plot while others criticized the film's depiction of women. The film performed a bit better on home release, with the film being released in a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack, the Blu-ray release including an R-rated extended cut that added 18 minutes to the film.

While it would be interesting to see what a director's cut of Sucker Punch looked like and how it differs from both the theatrical cut and the extended cut, it's unclear if there are any plans for it to see the light of day. For now, Snyder fans have his latest project to enjoy, Army of the Dead which will debut on Netflix on May 21.