HBO Max’s release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League cut will arrive in March 2021. In the meantime, Snyder hasn’t shied away from all manner of revelations regarding the movie (and its position relative to the DCEU), and he’s opening up more about his decision to leave the movie a few months prior to its theatrical release. By now, most comic-book fans are aware that Snyder’s daughter, Autumn, took her own life in 2017, and Joss Whedon was hired to complete the movie. There’s plenty of controversy swirling around how Whedon allegedly handled the production, and there’s no telling if there will be a resolution there, but Snyder’s not concerned with that. Instead, he’s opening up about the thought process that led him to step away.
As Snyder tells CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell, his mindset was all about family and no longer possessing the energy to deal with what he describes as the customary “fight” between director and studio to bring a production home:
“I just was kind of done with it. I was in this place of [knowing] my family needs me more than this bullsh*t, and I just need to honor them and do the best I can to heal that world. I had no energy to fight [the studio], and fight for [the movie]. Literally, zero energy for that. I really think that’s the main thing. I think there’s a different world where I stayed and kind of tried. And I’m sure I could have… because every movie is a fight, right? I was used to that. But I just did not have the [energy]. There was no fight in me. I had been beaten by what was going on in my life and I just didn’t want to, I didn’t care to… that was kind of where I was.”
In the years since Autumn’s death, fans have rallied to raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the cause that’s understandably close to Snyder’s heart, and he has expressed gratitude for the continued gesture.
Back on the subject of Justice League, it appears that we still don’t definitively know whether this will be a four-part miniseries, as originally described, or if the project has transformed back into one feature length production. Whatever the case, Snyder has revealed that fans can expect around two-and-a-half hours of new footage in around four hours of total runtime. IGN also reports that Snyder told a fan that “one shot” is how it’s happening, although it remains unclear whether Snyder actually means, “Yeah, it’s a movie,” or “Yeah, it’s a miniseries that you will definitely bingewatch in one sitting.” Mysterious!
(Via CinemaBlend & IGN)