Fans last week were greeted with the good news that Zack Snyder’s incomplete movie, Justice League: The Snyder Cut is soon to be a reality on HBO Max. The streaming platform, which just started operations on 27 May, will come out with the Snyder Cut in 2021.
However, WarnerMedia Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt revealed that the situation is more complicated than fans realise. Apparently, the new Justice League: The Snyder Cut film will cost an additional $30 million to complete. He also said that, unlike what fans are expecting, the film isn’t just sitting in a Warner Bros’ vault. It has to be made from scratch, including added VFX shots. It’s a complicated process.
“I’ll just say, I wish it was just $30 million and stop there,” he said. “It’s an enormous undertaking and very complex,” Greenblatt said. About Justice League: The Snyder Cut being readily available, he added, “It does not exist. Zack is actually building it, and it’s complex, including — and I don’t want to get into too much detail that we haven’t already talked about yet — new FX shots. It’s a radical rethinking of that movie and it’s complicated and wildly expensive.”
Fans have been very vocal about realising the Snyder Cut of Justice League since 2018. DC fans pushed hard to make the movie happen, and #ReleaseTheSnyderCut trended quite a lot on Twitter. Along with fans, actors such as Gal Gadot and others also came out in support of it.
However, it is still unclear as to what HBO thinks is the end goal of all this, considering the huge obstacles that the makers are facing. It can’t just be about appeasing angry fans, and the notion that studios are only after money doesn’t stick in this context either.
Snyder’s 4-hour Justice League movie was a set up for a larger, multi-film storyline as well as a place for other DC solo films to take off from. So, is it safe to assume that these movies are back on again? It would also make sense to make Justice League: The Snyder Cut to smoothen out some continuity knots that the franchise presently has.
Whatever it may be, fans can rest assured that they are getting a redo of the Justice League movie, considering the huge amount of money that is being spent behind it.
And only time will tell what the movie means for the DC Universe as a whole.