The Snyder Cut is real. The Snyder Cut is has a trailer. And perhaps best of all, for fans of Zack Snyder and his original vision for “Justice League,” the Snyder Cut has a release date in March. Now, finally, after years of protest, the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut faithful are going to reap the benefits of their mission to disrupt Warner Bros. so much that the studio had to respond. And as Zack Snyder explained in the forthcoming book, “Release the Snyder Cut: The Crazy True Story Behind the Fight That Saved Zack Snyder’s Justice League” (via TheDirect), it’s the disruption on social media that led to WB finally agreeing to release the new cut of the superhero film.
“Their websites, their Twitter, their everything …they were paralyzed. They were literally paralyzed,” Snyder explained. “They could make no release. They could talk about nothing. I was talking to an unnamed executive who said that [HBO Max] would tweet something about Sesame Street, and people would be like, ‘Fuck Elmo! Release the Snyder Cut! That was the world they lived in. And they were like, ‘Jesus Christ, what are we supposed to do? We can’t function!’ That’s pretty rad.”
As film fans on social media are well aware, the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement is filled with incredibly passionate fans of Snyder and his works. And they are not the type of people to sit back and stay quiet if there’s some perceived injustice that needs to be fixed. And the “Justice League” director’s cut is just such a situation, where the fans believe Zack Snyder was given a raw deal by WB and the studio owed it to him to fix the problem.
And at its peak, #ReleaseTheSnyderCut was an omnipresent part of the Warner Bros. discussion, with the fans hijacking any tweet or announcement to ask the studio to release Zack Snyder’s original “Justice League.”
The director said, “They would say things like, ‘Well, it’s just a vocal minority. It’s just a small amount of people. I’m like, ‘Okay, fair enough. If that’s what you want to say. But if that’s true, and it’s not that big of a deal, how come you guys, a giant media corporation, cannot generate the same number of social media impressions as this vocal, grassroots minority that aren’t that big of a deal?’”
Of course, as we now know, the studio did relent and Zack Snyder’s “Justice League” director’s cut is coming on March 18. And building off the success of this movement, the fans have already begun looking at David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad” director’s cut and other battles to fight. So, we’ll have to see if WB will have an easier time promoting their kids’ show content in the future.
