Zack Snyder Says His JUSTICE LEAGUE Movie Script Was Darker and Weird, But WB Wanted More Fun

Zack Snyder he’s talking about his Justice League film again as he recently sat with Avengers: Infinity War AND Game over directors The Russo Brothers. in their Pizza Film School program. While talking to them, he offered a little more insight into the process he went through developing the film with Warner Bros. and how he was initially developing something darker and weirder, but the studio wanted it to be more fun.

While Snyder and The Russos were discussing their writing process for the movies they make, they all agreed they preferred the process of jigsaw-style notes on a wall. Those notes shift and move as they “find” the real story and the movie sequences they end up shooting. It is at this point that Snyder spoke about Justice League saying:

“And so the Justice League script evolved from that [process]. Now I’m going to be honest that when the script — what happened with Justice League is we had a lot… The original script was darker and weirder. And then when Batman vs. Superman came out, and the studio was like, ‘That’s not funny enough! People want funnier movies! They want fun stuff!’ We went back and did a great kind of… lighten up the overall movie. And I would say my cut of Justice League is sort of… it’s somewhere in between.

“I’ve always kept some of the most intense stuff I’ve shot though, [that] I thought, in retrospect, they would have wanted to anyway, obviously making sure they got what was on the page, but we had this other script. I think in the original script Lois and Batman got together, you know briefly – there was a whole other thing that everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, you can’t do that.’ [laughs]. Because Superman died and I was like, ‘Lois is a really great person. Yes, so…”

We all know what happened with the project during production. It seems like Snyder and the studio could never quite get on the same page, and he was eventually replaced by Joss Whedon after a series of unfortunate events. Years later, after all the drama had died down, Snyder managed to release a four-hour cut of his film, but his initial plan was to turn it into a six-episode series! But that idea ended up being shut down.

Snyder explained, “Originally, we talked about doing [Zack Snyder’s Justice League] like six parts released separately, but then there were some legal rules…” He then joked, ‘Everyone was like, ‘Ahhh, don’t!'”

Finally, Snyder got to share his vision of Justice League, fans got their own Snyder Cut and, for the most part, everyone was happy with the result. Snyder had a good run with DC, but he’s moved on and has no plans to return to the DC Universe.

It sure seems like working with WB on these DC movies has been a terrible experience for him.