HBO Max boss Robert Greenblatt ended long-standing speculation surrounding the existence of an actual full-length director's cut of Justice League from Zack Snyder. Greenblatt confirmed on the Recode Media podcast Tuesday, that the Snyder Cut doesn't actually exist. and that what audiences will see on HBO Max next year will be something different.
"It isn't as easy as going into the vault, and there's a Snyder Cut sitting in there to put out," Greenblatt explained. "It does not exist. Zack is actually building it, and it’s complex, including—and I don’t want to get into too much detail that we haven’t already talked about yet—new FX shots. It’s a radical rethinking of that movie, and it’s complicated, and wildly expensive."
There are obvious shades of grey here, because in December, Snyder posted a photo proving that a 214-minute version of Justice League exists.
In case you don't want to do the math, that's three hours and 34 minutes. People were losing their shit over having to sit through Avengers: Endgame, which had a runtime just over three hours, and that was Avengers: Endgame! It’s possible that Snyder will want to trim down his movie even more, considering he had an assembly cut that clocked in at five hours.
Following the announcement that the Snyder Cut of Justice League would be hitting HBO Max next year, The Hollywood Reporter claimed that it would cost between $20 and $30 million, suggesting that tweaks needed to be made to get this film to the finish line. In response to that rumored price tag attached to the Snyder Cut, Greenblatt said, "I'll just say, I wish it was just $30 million and stop there," adding, "It's an enormous undertaking and very complex."
When discussing what it took to get the Snyder Cut to HBO Max, Greenblatt would only concede that it involved "many, many hurdles to jump over." HBO Max content chief Kevin Reilly explained those hurdles a little bit further to Business Insider.
"I forget when Zack and Deborah first gave us the sense of where they were heading, but even from that meeting, me and my team felt it was something we really wanted to do," Reilly said. "There were a lot of issues involved to figure out how we could deliver on his vision, and a myriad of legal issues. We've been sitting on this for quite some time but working on it. It was obviously a secret project given the high level of interest, but we were chipping away at it piece by piece."
Shortly before the official announcement, Greenblatt admitted that some wrinkles were smoothed out "literally within the last week," but once everything was ironed out, they wanted to get the word out as soon as possible. After all, people have been yearning for this Snyder Cut for quite some time.
