The Beauty Of Zack Snyder’s Justice League

We thought it was going to take 20 years. Well, I thought it might take that long.

Alright, that’s not totally true. I did say at one point that we would see the Snyder Cut much sooner than fans of Superman II got to see the Richard Donner cut of that film, which was 23 years, but even then I wasn’t completely confident that we were going to see it in the not too distant future. It always seemed like there were a lot of hurdles for it to climb and that it would take time to climb them, even though I thought it eventually would.

The reason I thought it would eventually see the light of day at some point turned out to be pretty spot on, only much faster than I or others might have thought. I’m no fortune teller, but my argument for the release of the Snyder Cut of Justice League has always boiled down to opportunity, which is the same reason any director’s or extended cut is ever released, as an opportunity to make more money. I own a Steelbook Extended Edition of The Martian that I still haven’t watched. I’ve seen the movie several times, but there was nothing in it that felt unfinished to me at all, so I haven’t been in any kind of hurry to watch an extended version. I will eventually, but not just yet.

So why did I buy it? Because it was on sale at Best Buy one day and if I’m going to own a movie, I want the full version of it, not the abridged theatrical version that got the studio more showtimes to collect from. The point is, it exists. An extended cut of The Martian. I didn’t ask for it, no one else I knew asked for it, but someone thought to make it and release it on the secondary market.

So if that existed, why couldn’t the Snyder Cut? Especially with so many people actually asking for it? Well, you’ve got to convince the studio that it’s worth their while to do it, and that certainly happened on November 17, 2019 when #ReleaseTheSnyderCut trended massively worldwide, and we now know that was officially the catalyst for Toby Emmerich to talk to the Snyders about making it happen. It wasn’t going to be a theatrical release, though. Not in this day and age, not even for $20 to $30 million to finish it.

Enter the real “beauty” of this whole situation: The Streaming Age AKA The Streaming Wars.

You’ve heard me talk about this on my show and on Fans Without Borders many times, the evolution of Hollywood from a traditional theatrical model to a new streaming model. Relatively new at this point because Netflix has been dominating it for years, but in the last few years we’ve seen Amazon, Apple, Disney and others make their moves into it, and in just a week WarnerMedia is about to make their own move with HBO Max, and it’s a BIG move. We’re talking a library that will easily rival if not dwarf everyone else’s and seriously challenge Netflix. Note, I said library, not subscribers. Everyone will be chasing Netflix in that department for still a good number of years yet.

It is HBO Max and The Streaming Age that we have to thank for what will now be the official release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League in 2021, on that very service, an option that literally did not exist in 2018 when #ReleaseTheSnyderCut really took off as a movement. The idea of being able to release this project on a streaming service, without any box office expectations, meaning that it can have more freedom and more time to tell its story, is absolutely tantalizing and beyond what many of us really wanted from the whole thing, which at the end of the day was just Snyder’s version of the movie without any WB “Whedonizing.”

The thing is, this is more than just fans “winning” after two and a half years of struggle to get it released. This is the shining example of the true power that The Streaming Age wields in the industry. Under the traditional market, this would never happen, at least not this fast. It would have likely taken years of fan campaigning, more than a few reshufflings of executives at WB, in addition to a continued desire from the Snyders just to get it released on VOD or home media with maybe a Fandom event for theatrical engagement at all, but with a streaming service, at a time where the audience is craving on demand content in their homes at an unprecedented rate, and no box office pressures to worry about, the opportunity to release such a project in hopes of building an audience for your new service becomes an almost no-brainer to capitalize on.

And this is precisely what the “slippery slope” crowd of detractors, who are “concerned” about “setting a bad precedent” don’t understand. They believe that WB caved into the demands of all the angry, bitter trolls on Twitter and social media that harassed the studio and others over the Snyder Cut. Ridiculous, and illogical, because there is no sound business reason for giving into to trolls on social media, especially when your last four DC films since Justice League made more than two and a half billion dollars combined at the box office. With Wonder Woman 1984 on deck, why rehash your only true failure in the shared universe comic book movie era? Because people want to see it and will pay at least one monthly $14.99 charge to do it, which could easily be two monthly charges if Zack Snyder’s Justice League is 6 episodes each released weekly.

This is a business decision by AT&T and WarnerMedia, bottom line and just because it was aided and precipitated by the fans doesn’t mean it’s opening the floodgates for more hashtags. #ReleaseTheAyerCut may exist for his version of Suicide Squad, but his situation is very tied in with Snyder’s on several levels. Don’t expect to see #ReleaseTheAbramsCut of Star Wars Episode IX take off anytime soon or #ReleaseTheRealSeason8OfGOT. Those make no sense in a business aspect at all. The Snyder Cut release does, and it’s all because of the streamers.

Now if another situation like what happened with Justice League does occur, streaming platforms are an option for an alternate version and it’s no different than the extended cut of The Martian I was talking about earlier. Films and projects that were meddled with or did poorly at theater(whatever those look like down the road) can find second lives on streaming apps as original content for a service, and the lifeblood of any streaming service, despite the size of its library, is its catalog of original content. What does it have that the others don’t? Netflix has Stranger Things. Amazon has The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Hulu has The Handmaid’s Tale. Apple TV+ has The Morning Show. CBS All Access has Star Trek: Discovery and Disney+ has The Mandalorian.

And now HBO Max has Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

How remarkably awesome is that?