Are they real­ly going to release the Sny­der Cut?

The Wikipedia arti­cle titled ​“Ver­sions of Jus­tice League,” some­thing one might expect to occu­py a brief explana­to­ry sub­head in the prop­er Jus­tice League entry, is very long. It com­pris­es thou­sands of words and over one hun­dred and fifty foot­notes, because that’s just what it takes to ful­ly elu­ci­date the recent brouha­ha sur­round­ing the #ReleaseTheS­ny­der­Cut campaign.

Zack Sny­der remains the sole cred­it­ed direc­tor of 2017’s super­hero extrav­a­gan­za Jus­tice League, but he part­ed ways with the pro­duc­tion mid­way in the spring of that year, tak­ing some well-deserved time fol­low­ing the death of his daugh­ter. Warn­er Bros. brought in Joss Whe­don, a cowriter of the Jus­tice League script and an old hand at capes-and-tights crossovers from his time spent on The Avengers, to do some patch-up direct­ing and com­plete the final edit.

When the film debuted lat­er that year, a small fac­tion of nonethe­less extreme­ly vocal fans per­ceived a sense of cre­ative com­pro­mise that they traced back to the taint­ing influ­ence of Whe­don. With mem­o­ries of the embat­tled Super­man II fresh in their heads (an affair in which orig­i­nal direc­tor Richard Don­ner was oust­ed and replaced by a stu­dio-sanc­tioned sub­sti­tute, com­plet­ing his per­son­al edit only after years of legal bat­tles), this grass­roots move­ment ded­i­cat­ed itself to bring­ing the rumored ​“Sny­der Cut” into the light of day.

As film-restora­tion activist efforts go, this one has shaki­er foun­da­tions than most; for one, the mere exis­tence of a ​“Sny­der Cut” is pred­i­cat­ed on hearsay, most­ly from par­ties involved with the pro­duc­tion that offer con­flict­ing accounts of its done-ness. (This can all be found on the exhaus­tive Wikipedia article.)

More­over, the fandom’s read of the sit­u­a­tion assumes an ani­mos­i­ty between Sny­der and Warn­er Bros that has nev­er been proven, the notion that he want­ed a dark and grit­ty take on the mate­r­i­al until the stu­dio wrest­ed con­trol and bright­ened every­thing up as a response to the dis­mal recep­tion of Bat­man v Super­man. He did, after all, parts ways with the film of his own volition.

What start­ed as a knee-jerk reac­tion to pos­si­bly imag­ined stu­dio med­dling has mutat­ed into some­thing stranger and more aggres­sive, as evi­denced by the scores of tweets implor­ing Warn­er Bros to “#ReleaseTheS­ny­der­Cut” found as replies to any­thing the studio’s offi­cial account might post. And then there’s the ​“The Time Has Come,” a nov­el­ty song billed as ​“The Offi­cial Release The Sny­der Cut Anthem.”

Those fol­low­ing show­biz news have kept an eye on this evolv­ing sto­ry over the past two years, but it took a dra­mat­ic turn ear­li­er just yes­ter­day, when actors Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Ray Fish­er all post­ed coor­di­nat­ed tweets call­ing on Warn­er Bros. to, you guessed it, #ReleaseTheS­ny­der­Cut. Sny­der then gave his autho­rized approval with a pair of tweets co-sign­ing Affleck and Gadot’s sentiments.

This rep­re­sents the strongest sug­ges­tion yet that the Sny­der cut may very well exist, though what appears to be a col­lec­tive deci­sion to ral­ly the pub­lic instead of going through their con­tacts at Warn­er Bros hints at fric­tion. If releas­ing the Sny­der cut was as sim­ple as nego­ti­at­ing with the cur­rent rights hold­ers, that would be that. But the Twit­ter cam­paign sug­gests a need to prove that real peo­ple would actu­al­ly be into this, that what seemed like a fringe con­cern has actu­al­ly spread to the mainstream.

Warn­er Bros won’t put a tweaked ver­sion of Jus­tice League back in the­aters unless they can be sure it’ll make mon­ey, so for the Sny­der faith­ful, this will be the great­est test of their devo­tion. Can they con­vince the rest of Hol­ly­wood to take them seriously?