We recently got official confirmation that Warner Bros. was working on the "Snyder Cut" of Justice League, and director Zack Snyder's original version of the DC Comics team-up movie will be coming to HBO Max at some point next year.
Initial reports indicated that the studio would have to spend between $20 million and $30 million to complete the project, but it sounds like it's actually going to cost quite a bit more.
WarnerMedia Chairman Bob Greenblatt appeared on the latest episode of the Recode Media podcast to talk about the upcoming launch of the streaming service, and he revealed that serious discussions relating to Zack Snder's Justice League have been taking place as far back as last fall. Greenblatt confirmed that the Snyder Cut "does not exist" (yet) and that this is going to be a "radical rethinking" of the movie we saw in theaters. He also said that a lot of very expensive work needed to be done.
When host Peter Kafka said he'd heard it'd cost around $30M, Greenblat responded, "I wish it was just $30 million."
“We had to go to the unions and get certain things clear with them about what we were doing,” he continued. “Is the Snyder Cut a new movie, or is it a recut? There’s lots of complexity that the fan [community] doesn’t know about.”
There's clearly much more going in to seeing Snyder's vision to fruition than we'd been led to believe by the trade reports. We had heard that the filmmaker wanted to bring some of his cast back to shoot additional scenes and the studio refused, but perhaps an agreement was reached?
Greenblat did also mention that he was hesitant to jump ahead and talk about anything that wasn't public knowledge yet, so hopefully another announcement is on the way.
The pertinent chat comes in around the 31:40 mark. Have a listen for yourselves and let us know what you think.