Zack Snyder recently appeared at IGN Fan Fest and talked about his new cut of Justice League coming to HBO Max in March.
Snyder also surprised fans by revealing his plans for the Justice League, which included a huge timeline change for the sequel. Justice League 2 would have taken place in the Knightmare timeline.
Justice League 2: Knightmare Movie
Remember all those scenes from the trailer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League that shows the world decimated, Joker and Batman teaming up, and what Snyder calls the Knightmare world?
That is what fans would have expected to see in Justice League 2.
“Well, it was meant to be two more movies,” Snyder told IGN Fan Fest. “I’d plant the seeds as I had wanted to of what would come in the later films.”
According to Snyder, if Justice League had come out with his plans, it wouldn’t have had the happily ever after ending that Joss Whedon’s movie had. It would have had a “massive cliffhanger.”
“That’s in there, but as far as those stories that would be to come — if ever that happened, which it does not look like it would — but I think it’s easy to speculate based on that and we can talk about that for quite a while,” Snyder said.
He also revealed the second movie would have been the Knightmare movie. Batman was struggling to save what was left of humanity from an evil Superman.
The entire theme would have been the Justice League trying to set things right.
An evil Superman
The idea of an evil Superman makes it almost sound like Zack Snyder wanted to bring remnants of the videogame/comic book series Injustice: Gods Among Us to the big screen.
In that alternate Earth story, Joker tricked Superman into killing Lois Lane and that drove Superman over the edge. He murdered Joker and then made himself the ruler of Earth, while Batman and other heroes tried to stop him.
In this case, while it is not clear how the story would go, it is possible that Batman and Lois Lane never talked down Superman in Justice League and he ended up taking over anyway, similar to the Knightmare scenes showed in the theatrical cut.
It is also something that might be explored in the HBO Max Justice League release in March.
“It’s relatively minimal but it’s… definitely appropriate for the movie,” Snyder explained. “It’s not anything crazy but it definitely doesn’t overstay its welcome but it definitely does what I needed it to do for the story and for us. Beyond that, I think it’s a spoiler.”
Zack Snyder’s Justice League hits HBO Max on March 18.