Zack Snyder’s four-hour, mega-budget ‚Justice League‘ debuting as a streaming original feels like the natural endgame of a generational shift toward streaming and VOD over movie theaters.
Zack Snyder’s four-hour, mega-budget Justice League debuting as a streaming original feels like the natural endgame of a generational shift toward streaming and VOD over movie theaters.
Zack Snyder dropped what amounts to the first teaser for the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League on Thursday. It’s an announcement teaser in its purest form, with a single moment of Gal Gadot discovering a painting of Darkseid, all set to Jesse Eisenberg’s delicious sequel-bait monologue from the epilogue of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The clip is essentially a teaser for a trailer, which is all-but-certain to drop during the virtual DC FanDome event occurring on August 22. I’m presuming we’ll get a release date for the film (or mini-series), and I’m curious as to whether WB will A) release it during the summer and B) position it as the summer’s big event movie even if it doesn’t play in theaters.
In terms of size, scale and (all-told) budget, Justice League: The Snyder Cut could be next summer’s biggest movie by default. We can haggle over whether the alleged $30 million-plus budget for constructing a finalized version of the discarded “Snyder Cut” should be merged with the $300 million budget for the Joss Whedon-directed theatrical cut. That huge budget was partially due Whedon replacing Snyder, a process which involved massive rewrites and reshoots which created a final version that played like essentially “Diet Avengers.” Like Solo: A Star Wars Story, a director swap and copious reshoots created a budget that demanded top-tier grosses. Like Solo, a mediocre result ($394 million for Solo and $659 million for Justice League) was outright disastrous due to the increased costs.
The Ron Howard-directed Han Solo prequel ended up costing closer to $275 million than $175 million, meaning its $213 million domestic and $394 million global gross was a bomb as opposed to a “disappointment in relation to cost.” Apples and oranges perhaps, but a franchise-hungry Universal gave us a sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman after the 2012 Kristen Stewart/Chris Hemsworth fantasy earned $396 million global on a $170 million budget. The $270 million budget for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was partially due to discarded Superman movies that never made it past the development stage. Ditto, allegedly, Paul Feig’s $144 million Ghostbusters. In both cases, merely “okay” totals ($394 million in 2006 and $229 million in 2016) were outright disasters due to the inflated budgets.
If we count the money that went into bringing Justice League to theaters and the money that will be spent bringing the “Snyder Cut” to HBO Max, then the new version essentially cost around $350 million, making it one of the more expensive movies of all time. Looking at the films slated for next summer, assuming everything currently scheduled actually opens next year, the films that likely cost $150-$250 million (with lots of wiggle room) are Jurassic World: Dominion, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, F9, The Batman, The Suicide Squad, Godzilla Vs.
