Zack Snyder Reveals Why Plan to Release Justice League as Six Episode Series Was Scrapped

Zack Snyder has given some more details on why plans to adapt his Justice League epic into a six-episode series were scrapped. After all of the drama surrounding the making of the DC superhero film, Warner Bros. decided to allow Zack Snyder to release his true vision of the film on HBO Max back in 2021. This was during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Warner Bros. was looking to add more content to HBO Max to encourage subscriber sign-ups. Thus, Zack Snyder’s Justice League was born. At the time, there were talks of how Zack Snyder’s Justice League would be released, with the idea floated of making it a multi-night event. Now, we learn from the man himself why they pivoted to a four-plus hour drop of Justice League.

The latest episode of the Pizza Film School podcast by the Russo Brothers had Zack Snyder on as a guest, and during one part of the conversation, Snyder mentioned how Justice League was split into chapters, sort of a way to build in an intermission for viewers at home who need to either stop or pause to take a break. “Originally, we had talked about doing [Zack Snyder’s Justice League] as six parts released separately, but then there were some legal rules…,” Snyder said. Joe Russo added how there could be things regarding TV contracts for the cast if the movie were split into a series, and how payments would be handled. 

“Everyone was like, ‘Ahhh, don’t do that!’” Snyder joked.

James Gunn Rebooting DC Universe

Warner Bros. Discovery has brought on filmmakers James Gunn and Peter Safran as the co-CEOs of DC Studios. They announced their opening plans for the universe at the end of January with Chapter 1: Gods & Monsters. The TV and movie slate includes 10 titles. Five of these are movies: Superman: Legacy, The Authority, The Brave and The Bold, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and Swamp Thing. The other five titles are series: Creature Commandos, Waller, Booster Gold, Lanterns, and Paradise Lost. 

Chapter 1 is the first of two chapters that will tell a story over 8 to 10 years, per Gunn and Safran’s estimations. “A lot of people think it’s going to be Marvel 2.0, and definitely I learned a lot of stuff at Marvel. I think that we have a lot of differences,” Gunn explained. “We are telling a big, huge, central story that is like Marvel, except for, I think that we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work that story out completely. But we’re also creating a universe that is like Star Wars, where there’s different times, different places, different things, or Game of Thrones, where characters are a little bit more morally complex.”