Zack Snyder has revealed why he stepped down from Justice League in 2017. As it turns out, the director’s fragile emotional state wasn’t the only reason why he decided to leave the project. Principal production on the highly anticipated movie stared in April 2016 and ran through October. It was allegedly plagued with the studio asking Snyder and Chris Terrio to rewrite parts of the script, mainly due to the poor reception of Batman v Superman. Joss Whedon was eventually brought on to oversee the reshoots in 2017.
Before Joss Whedon had come on board, Zack Snyder left the Justice League production after overseeing principal photography. On March 12th, 2017, the suicide of his daughter Autumn prompted Snyder to withdraw from the project entirely to be with his family. While many assumed that this was the only reason why Snyder didn’t return, that isn’t exactly the case. When asked whether or not he would have returned if Warner Bros. agreed to push the movie back, Snyder revealed that he would not have. He explains.
“I just was kind of done with it. I was in this place of [knowing] my family needs me more than this bullsh*t, and I just need to honor them and do the best I can to heal that world. I had no energy to fight [the studio], and fight for [the movie]. Literally, zero energy for that. I really think that’s the main thing. I think there’s a different world where I stayed and kind of tried. And I’m sure I could have… because every movie is a fight, right? I was used to that. But I just did not have the [energy]. There was no fight in me. I had been beaten by what was going on in my life and I just didn’t want to, I didn’t care to… that was kind of where I was.”
The Snyder family went through an unspeakable tragedy, which is the major reason why Zack Snyder left Justice League. But, there was also the fighting with the studio that he just did not want to deal with any further. At the time, Snyder maintained that it was always the plan to have Joss Whedon take over reshoots, but that wasn’t really the case. When asked about studio tampering with the movie, the director often took the high road, preferring not to discuss it.
However, there were reports behind-the-scenes that studio wanted to pretty much undo everything Zack Snyder did with Justice League. Over time, these reports have seemingly been proven to be true, or at least based on fact, which is what really fueled the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement. DC fans wanted to see Snyder’s true vision for the movie, and they were able to raise a lot of money for suicide awareness in the process, which was a tribute to Autumn and the Snyder family.
As the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement gained momentum, Zack Snyder would tease elements of his original vision, maintaining that the Snyder Cut did actually exist. After three years of relentless action from Snyder fans, Warner Bros. did the unthinkable. They approached Zack Snyder about finishing his cut of the movie and offered him the money to do so. Now, fans have Zack Snyder’s Justice League officially coming out on HBO Max in March. The interview with Zack Snyder was originally conducted by CinemaBlend.