Zack Snyder’s Justice League Trailer Reveals Batman’s Showdown With Jared Leto’s Joker

The age of heroes is reborn in the newest trailer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. In the four-hour and R-rated director’s cut premiering March 18 on the HBO Max streaming service, the death of Superman (Henry Cavill) inspires Batman (Ben Affleck) to assemble a team of metahumans capable of protecting the planet from Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) and an army of parademons. United with allies Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and the Flash (Ezra Miller), Batman and the newly-formed Justice League come together to prevent an apocalyptic future under the rule of Apokolips warlord Darkseid (Ray Porter).

“I got to say I never really thought it would happen. I’d been living with the prospect that it would never happen and fine with it,” Snyder said in a recent interview about the Snyder Cut, an entirely new version of the superhero ensemble that released into theaters in 2017. “I’ll be honest. I’d made peace with the fact that this was the world I was going to be in. It was going to be a situation where this was a movie that I never really finished. I have my cut of it here at the house, and if you want to see when you’re over, you can check it out, but that’s pretty much it.”

On restoring his Justice League for HBO Max, Snyder added, “But when we got to the point where, through a lot of hurdles and back and forth, that we’d come to the place where yes, the movie, you’re allowed to finish it and to do it the right way, that was a pretty cathartic and beautiful moment that I shared with my family… it was really an impossible dream come true.”

Along with the long-awaited reveal of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman‘s Calvin Swanwick (Harry Lennix) as the shape-shifting Martian Manhunter, Zack Snyder’s Justice League reveals DeSaad (Peter Guinness), pits Batman against the Joker (Jared Leto) in a hellish Knightmare, and marks the return of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) opposite the assassin Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello).

Snyder says studio Warner Bros. has no plans to bring him back to the DC Extended Universe for a Justice League 2, but the filmmaker will fulfill his vision for the “most pure” version of the Snyder Cut when he soon releases the Justice League: Justice Is Gray Edition in black-and-white.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League premieres Thursday, March 18, on HBO Max.