"It Will Be an Entirely New Thing": Zack Snyder's $20M-Plus 'Justice League' Cut Plans Revealed 

Highlights:

Whether it will be released as an almost four-hour director’s cut or split into six "chapters" has yet to be decided, but the Snyders are now in the midst of reassembling much of their original postproduction crew to score, cut, add new and finish old visual effects, and, yes, maybe bring back many of the actors to record additional dialogue.

One source has pegged the effort in the $20 million range, although another source says that figure could be closer to $30 million. The parties involved had no comment.

"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," Zack Snyder tells The Hollywood Reporter, noting that, to this day, he has not watched the version released in theaters. "You probably saw one-fourth of what I did," the director notes, basing his judgment on what has been shared with him of Whedon's version.

In January 2017, [Snyder] had what he considered his optimal version of Justice League, almost four hours long, although he knew it was something the studio would not release. Warners wanted a cut in the two-hour range, and he delivered a rough version with an approximate two-hour, 20-minute running time.

League opened Nov. 17 to weak reviews and sluggish box office, eventually taking in $658 million worldwide. However, almost immediately a movement was born. Fans unhappy with the film created the now-infamous hashtag. A Change.org petition for Warners to release Snyder’s version had already garnered over 100,000 signatures less than five days after the movie’s release.

It was on the two-year anniversary, however, that the zenith hit and the hashtag became a top worldwide trend. "#ReleasetheSnyderCut is the most-tweeted hashtag about a movie that WB has ever made, but it’s a movie they’ve never released," says Snyder. "It’s a weird stat but it’s cool."

Snyder also spent April and May reaching out to the sizable cast, giving a heads-up on the new development and letting them know their services may be needed. (The first person called: Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg. "He was like, 'You’re kidding me, right?'" recalls Zack.)