Snyder Cut five years on: a movement that never changed Hollywood

Zack Snyder’s Justice League runs 242 minutes, but the story behind the director’s cut stretches much further back. After his daughter’s death by suicide, Snyder left the 2017 crossover and Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon to finish the film; Whedon delivered a glossy, quippy superhero movie that departed from the moody, visual tone of earlier DCEU entries.

The 2017 release met brutal reviews and a relatively modest box office, and Snyder’s fans almost immediately demanded the version they believed he intended. The campaign coalesced around a hashtag and grew into more than online noise. Supporters bought billboards in Times Square and at Comic Con and raised over $500,000 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, even as many critics and detractors endured sustained harassment from anonymous accounts and, as later reporting found, many Twitter bots.

Warner announced Zack Snyder’s Justice League as an HBO Max exclusive in May 2020, and less than a year later Snyder delivered a mostly satisfying director’s cut.

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