Zack Snyder’s newest Justice League tease may be his boldest yet, but it’s once again causing some people to question just how complete his original cut of the movie actually is. One of the biggest struggles the Snyder Cut has faced is the assumption from many that the movie doesn’t exist, and the news that Snyder would like to shoot additional scenes is reigniting those claims.
Snyder recently hosted a contest for fans to create their own posters for Zack Snyder’s Justice League (the official title he’s using instead of “The Snyder Cut”), and he revealed the prize for the top poster (out of an estimated 1,200 submissions) was the scene marker used throughout Justice League’s production, only with an additional message on the back, making it a sort of “golden ticket” for the winner to operate the marker for the duration of some additional photography to shoot new scenes with Batman, Superman, Lois Lane, and Martian Manhunter.
So the obvious question is, if Snyder wants these scenes in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and they aren’t shot yet, then how can he also say the movie exists? The answer is one that has been a major point of confusion (and contention) between both fans and the film’s detractors for the past two years. As we’ve been reporting during this time, a significant amount of the Snyder Cut has been completed, but it’s not 100% done, which is why the definition of “exists” is really important.
Many people have interpreted “exists” to mean it’s 100% done and ready to project on-screen at movie theaters, and if it’s not, then it “doesn’t exist,” but that narrow definition doesn’t have any value to the debate at hand. The question has always been if its level of completion is significant enough to merit finishing for a release. Snyder himself says “of course” it exists, while he’s also posted images showing incomplete VFX or telling fans he never shot certain elements like Martian Manhunter, so he clearly hasn’t been inferring it’s 100% done when he says it exists.
This is why the debate over its existence, and frankly its exact level of completion, has always ignored the actual relevant factors. The question isn’t whether or not it’s 100% done or whether it’d be good or bad or any of that. The question, as it is with any movie, is whether the demand is strong enough to merit the expense it would take to finish it for a release (or how finished it would need to be to if it were released at less than 100%). Snyder completed the entirety of Justice League’s principal photography, VFX supervisors have said a lot of scenes are done (and that even more are nearly done), there’s evidence Snyder was even working on capturing ADR and doing color grading before he left the project, and Junkie XL says his score is done, meaning the movie is in the final stages of completion and all Snyder has ever been talking about is getting it over the finish line.
As has always been the case, the movie won’t get released unless it gets the green light from Warner Bros. - or, really, AT&T if it’s going to HBO Max - and some additional funding to get the movie completed. Estimates have been as high as $40 million to finish the movie, but with HBO Max willing to open its pockets for content, paying $425 million to acquire the streaming rights Friends, and Netfix signing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Adam Sandler, $40 million (or more) is a small price to pay for a massive Superhero movie featuring Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck and DC characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Cyborg, and the first live-action appearance of Darkseid.
Next: Justice League: Why HBO Max is Perfect For Releasing the Snyder Cut
