In some surprising news, Zack Snyder said he refused to take a paycheck for making his Snyder Cut of Justice League for HBO Max.
However, the reason he refused to take pay makes all the sense in the world.
Zack Snyder wasn’t paid for HBO Max Justice League cut
Zack Snyder had a lot he wanted to accomplish with his Snyder Cut of Justice League for HBO Max.
This was about more to him than just re-editing scenes and putting out a movie that was more about his vision than what was released in theaters. Snyder wanted to shoot a lot more scenes and show where his vision of the DCEU was heading.
That cost $70 million in additional funding to film and add two hours to the movie’s running time.
“I’m not getting paid, Snyder told Vanity Fair in an interview. “I didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, and it allowed me to keep my negotiating powers with these people pretty strong.”
He realized that if he did this all for free, he would be able to ask for more from Warner Bros to complete his vision of Justice League.
“It’s exciting to get this chance, and I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and I love working on it, and I’d do it for free – and I am,” Snyder explained.
Warner Bros reasoning for allowing the Snyder Cut
Warner Bros allowing Zack Snyder to make his cut of Justice League was not an easy sell, so him refusing to take a paycheck for it made their eventual decision easier.
“It isn’t as easy as going into the vault, and there’s a Snyder Cut sitting there to put out,” Greenblatt the Vox’s Recode podcast last May. “It does not exist. Zack is actually building it, and it’s complex, including new VFX shots.
“It’s a radical rethinking of that movie, and it’s complicated and wildly expensive. I’ll just say I wish it was just 30 million and stop there. It’s an enormous undertaking and very complex.”
Thankfully for Snyder Cut fans demanding to see his cut of the movie, Zack Snyder was willing to do this for nothing.
“I got to say I never really thought it would happen. I’d been living with the prospect that it would never happen and fine with it. I’ll be honest. I’d made peace with the fact that this was the world I was going to be in,” Snyder said in the Comicbook Debate (see video below).
“But when we got to the point where, through a lot of hurdles and back and forth, that we’d come to the place where yes, the movie, you’re allowed to finish it and to do it the right way, that was a pretty cathartic and beautiful moment that I shared with my family; it was really an impossible dream come true.”
Zack Snyder’s Justice League hits HBO Max on March 18.