HBO Max boss Bob Greenblatt has revealed more Justice League (opens in new tab) Snyder Cut details, not only giving a rough ballpark figure for how much the director’s cut will cost but also offering a window into how it all came together and what we can expect from the re-release in 2021.
“It’s been months of discussions with Zack and the producers to figure out how to do it,” Greenblatt told the Recode Media podcast (opens in new tab) of the process behind what eventually morphed into last week’s Snyder Cut announcement (opens in new tab) – but the hard work starts now.
“It isn’t as easy as going into the vault and there’s a Snyder Cut there to put out,” Greenblatt said. “It does not exist. Zack is building it and it’s complex,” while also namechecking “new effects shots” as a particular focus for the director.
So, it’s not just going to be a slapped-together recut. Far from it. Greenblatt calls it “a radical rethinking of [Justice League] and it’s complicated and wildly expensive.”
Original reports stated the cost of the Snyder Cut was somewhere in the region of $20-$30 million. Greenblatt’s response? “I wish it was just $30m and [I’ll] stop there!”
Amid the fan fervour and hashtags, though, why was there radio silence for so long? Greenblatt, who revealed talks started as far back as last Fall, explained: “We had to go to the unions and get certain things clear with them… there’s lots of complexity that the fan doesn’t know about it.”
“We weren’t going ‘Let’s not talk to those fans, let’s drive them crazy.’” Greenblatt affirmed. “We were actually spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to do this and there’s many, many hurdles to jump over. Once we saw that we could do it all and figure out the right economics – which was literally in the last week – we said let’s get this news out there.”
This is certainly the most we’ve heard about the fabled Snyder Cut, even accounting for Snyder himself. But, soon, the talking will be over and the real multi-million dollar work begins.