Justice Leaguehad a bad weekend. It drastically underperformed at the box office, and its failure will likely cause Warner Bros. to reconsider its strategy for the DCEU movies if they haven’t already. It’s also a massive failure because Warner Bros. basically made the film twice, once with original directorZack Snyderand thenJoss Whedonwas brought on and heavily reshot the film.
Now Snyder’s fans want his “cut” of the movie released along with the original score by composerJunkie XL. In a lengthy screed punctuated by text in all-caps (the surefire way to get people to take you seriously), a fan has posted anonline petitionasking Warner Bros. to release Snyder’s “Director’s Cut” and Junkie XL’s score for a home release. To be fair, Warner Bros. already kind of did this back withBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justicewhen they released the “Ultimate Edition”, but this is completely different.
This petition operates under the assumption that Snyder’s version is finished. In the petition, the author writes about discarding Junkie XL’s score in favor of one byDanny Elfman, “AN ODD MOVE FOR A FILM THAT WAS ALREADY FINISHED, MUCH TO THE DISSAPOINTMENT OF THE FANS, MYSELF INCLUDED.” Snyder’s version wasn’t “finished”. There may have been a completed cut, but I’m willing to bet it was filled with unfinished VFX work because Warner Bros. wasn’t going to pay money on VFX for a cut they weren’t going to use.
In order for this “cut” to be released, Warner Bros., who has already dumped a ton of money into the current cut ofJustice League, would then need to spendmoremoney to finish the VFX and then release this “Director’s Cut” just to the dying home video market. But let’s assume that this petition reaches its desired 75,000 signatures and Warner Bros. goes insane and acquiesces to this petition. If each of those fans pays full price for the highest-end version of this movie, a 4K Blu-ray Director’s Cut that retails for $30 (the current price for theWonder Woman4K Blu-ray), then that only pulled in $2,250,000, and that’s before the studio splits the income with retailers and other participants.
So aside from this being impossible from a production standpoint and ridiculous from an economic standpoint, there are plenty of fans who think this is an actual possibility. I look forward to their next petition where they demand Snyder be declared Emperor of Greenland.
