Photo: HBO Max
Photo: HBO Max

Snyder Cut’s Justice League: Release date

Zack Snyder's Justice League is out on March 18 on HBO Max. But what about those who don’t have HBO Max? The movie will be available on PVOD services on the same day in most territories – excluding China, France, and Japan. More details on specific PVOD services will be available follow soon.

Snyder Cut’s Justice League: Cast

Photo: HBO Max
Photo: HBO Max

With Jared Leto's recent casting as Joker, the sky's the limit when it comes to new characters in the Snyder Cut. And in case you accidentally glossed over what you just read, let me repeat: Jared Leto is returning as Joker in Zack Snyder's Justice League. I'll let you process that for a minute.

We recently learned that several actors including Henry Cavill (Superman), Ben Affleck (Batman), and Ray Fisher (Cyborg) are returning to shoot additional scenes for the Snyder Cut. Amber Heard is also back as Mera. But now we know new actors and characters from other series are being added to the cast. That carries massive implications about how different Snyder's vision really is from the original 2017 Justice League. That includes Joe Manganiello's Deathstroke, who even showed off his new look recently.

Among the other actors who have shown up so far in trailers and other material include Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), and Ciaran Hinds (Steppenwolf). It’s also expected that J.K. Simmons’ Commissioner Gordon will also be included, while Robin Wright’s Antiope – also showed up in the recent trailer. Steppenwolf's design, though, has been changed - because the original was too scary.

But it’s not called Zack Snyder’s Justice League for no good reason. There are new additions coming to the cast thanks to the director going in a different direction with some of the characters and scenes at play.

Ray Porter is set to appear as Darkseid, while Kiersey Clemons is seemingly back as Iris West. Snyder even teased an appearance from Martian Manhunter.

Intriguingly, a villain named DeSaad has been spotted in the trailer but it’s not yet known who voices Darkseid’s right-hand man. For more on the villain, here's a handy guide to DeSaad.

THE SNYDER CUT WILL TELL MORE OF CYBORG AND FLASH’S STORIES, AND FOCUS ON MEGA VILLAIN DARKSEID

After an online screening of Man of Steel on Wednesday, May 20, 2020, Zack Snyder announced that the Snyder Cut of Justice League is indeed real, and that it would be debuting on the upcoming new streaming service HBO Max sometime in 2021. Snyder reiterated that he has yet to watch the theatrical version of the film, which was completed by Joss Whedon when Snyder stepped away from the film due to a personal tragedy (more on that below), and further stated that what audiences saw was “probably one-fourth of what I did.” Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Snyder said that “It will be an entirely new thing, and, especially talking to those who have seen the released movie, a new experience apart from that movie.”

Fans got their first real look at the other three-fourths of Snyder’s vision when a new trailer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League premiered at online convention DC FanDome in August 2020. Set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” – a song Snyder used in his Watchmen film – the trailer revealed a few things, among them:

Legendary DC big bad Darkseid will indeed be the main focus when it comes to villains. We see him at the opening of the teaser and throughout.

We will see Superman in his dark, black and silver suit (more on that below).

We will get more of Victor Stone’s (Ray Fisher) backstory, and this version of Justice League will feature Iris West, the Flash’s love interest, who was cut from the original theatrical release.

We will get a lot more set up of Jason Momoa’s Aquaman character.

We will see the Hall of Justice completely devastated.

Zack Snyder has made good on his promise to change the color of the much-derided orange/red sky that features in the finale.

Batman gets a rousing moment that he did not in the original, telling the Justice League crew at the end of the trailer, “I don’t care how many demons he’s fought in how many hells. He’s never fought us. Not us united.”

Before revealing the teaser trailer, Snyder told viewers that compared to the original theatrically released Justice League, fans can expect to see “tons more of the flash,” including a scene that will show an ability we’ve not yet seen on screen, and “a little bit more of his emotional arc.”

Snyder also said that after so much of Victor Stone story was sacrificed in the first version of the film – including the aforementioned character of Iris West – his cut would center Cyborg. “Cyborg is the heart of the movie,” Snyder said. “Cyborg is the thing that I think in the end holds the team together in a lot of ways.”

WE WILL SEE SUPERMAN IN THE BLACK SUIT SNYDER ALWAYS WANTED

At fan event Justice Con in late July, Snyder dropped some big Justice League news. First up, he revealed that the world would get its first look at his cut of Justice League with a teaser that will drop at DC FanDome; then he threw red meat to the fans by showing a tiny bit of footage that revealed Henry Cavill’s Superman in a black suit in a deleted Justice League scene in which he flies to Bruce Wayne’s hideout and runs into Alfred. You may recognize the deleted scene from Justice League‘s home release, but in that available scene the suit is still the usual red.

And fans were treated to the scene in un-cropped IMAX formatting, which is the format in which the entire Snyder cut will be released. The story goes that Snyder always wanted Cavill’s Superman to don the black suit but that Warner Bros. felt it was too dark a turn for the Man of Steel’s character. The latest teaser revealed at DC FanDome confirmed we’d be getting the dark Super suit.

Snyder Cut's Justice League story differences: deleted scenes and more changes from Joss Whedon's version

Photo: DC/ Warner Bros.
Photo: DC/ Warner Bros.

Over the years, there have been several allusions to the Justice League Snyder Cut being radically different to the ones we ended up with. Here are just some of the highlights.

We're getting Black Suit Superman and even a different opening featuring the Man of Steel. Snyder said the third frame of the Snyder Cut trailer (which you can see above) is actually the opening for the movie and is a look at Superman's death in Batman v. Superman from another angle.

There's even the likelihood of this being a far grittier version of Justice League. So much so, in fact, that Zack Snyder expects it to get an R rating for violence and profanity. Batman even throws down an f-bomb at one point.

Around the time of Justice League’s release, several deleted scenes surfaced on the web. They included Barry saving Iris West and several cut Cyborg scenes, indicating he had a much larger part to play in Snyder’s vision, all of which have seemingly been confirmed since. Iris West will appear in the Snyder Cut, while new Cyborg scenes have been shown.

Expect far more of Ray Fisher's Cyborg, too. He said only one Snyder-shot scene featuring his character made it into the 2017 theatrical release. There's even a chance we could find out more about Robin's fate in the DCEU after Snyder 'liked' a theory explaining the Boy Wonder's demise.

Perhaps the most famous example of a Justice League deleted scene is where Superman meets Alfred. The line from Irons’ character “He said you’d come” had many believing Green Lantern would appear in the movie, though the scene – readily available online – shows it was the Man of Steel who turns up.

Generally, though, it's going to be a big departure from Joss Whedon's theatrical release. Snyder has even said he won't be using a certain line from the 2017 version because it "literally makes no sense." And with news of new characters cropping up from scrapped scenes and Leto as a new actor altogether shooting scenes, there will surely be challenges and dangers for the Justice League that they didn't face in Joss Whedon's movie.

What else can we expect from the Snyder Cut?

The first big insider report concerning the Snyder Cut came from THR, which outlined the future of the project. That included a possible $30m budget (a number that HBO Max Bob Greenblatt said is actually less than what is being spent) as well as the potential for the Snyder Cut to be a four-hour Justice League movie or for it to be split into a six-episode miniseries. Then reports emerged that it would be a four-part series, and then reports claimed it would cost nearer to $70m.

So, where’s that money going? The Wrap suggested it’s “for special effects, for scoring, and even ADR” but there will be “no reshoots of any kind.” That was later proven false, as Jared Leto filmed additional scenes as the Joker, and later it was confirmed that it will be a movie, not a series.

Justice League's Snyder Cut: Trailer

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THE SNYDER “ASSEMBLY”: A FIRST DRAFT

As with the myth of the six-hour version of David Lynch’s Dune, the notion of the Snyder Cut begins with an assembly of the film – a compilation of the best takes chosen by editors David Brenner, Richard Pearson, Martin Walsh, and Snyder himself representing the scenes as written in the script. Lacking complete special effects, utilizing a temporary soundtrack, and featuring the background studio noise of the scenes as they were filmed, an assembly is meant more to reveal what to cut from the script once the actors, technicians, and filmmakers fill in the gutters left behind by the screenplay. An actor’s expression may more effectively convey a piece of written dialogue, for example. But an assembly will give a director of a multi-million-dollar film the first inkling of what he may need to reshoot to massage the story into shape. For Dune, Lynch went back and reshot the scene in which Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) drinks the Water of Life to unite ideas and clarify ideas from a number of scenes in the assembly which were ultimately cut from the theatrical release.

And while assemblies are not typically released to the public, 20th Century Fox Home Video did release an “assembly cut” of Alien3 in its Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set and the subsequent Alien Anthology Blu-ray set. Roughly 30 minutes longer than the release version, it is a surprisingly finished product which more closely reflects director David Fincher’s vision of the film before the studio took it out of his hands and removed the religious overtones and an entire chase sequence. In fact, we’re inclined to believe the original “Snyder cut” fans were calling for, before production began again in earnest on the project, was more a fine assembly or early director’s cut than a true early assemblage of material.