Army of the Dead winning the Oscars Fan Favorite poll shows that Warner Bros.' mistakes with Snyder were bigger than Zack Snyder's Justice League. Snyder's zombie-heist movie Army of the Dead debuted on Netflix on May 21, 2021, with a limited theatrical run that began the preceding weekend. As Snyder's second zombie film after this 2004 feature directorial debut Dawn of the Dead, Army of the Dead put a very different spin on the zombie genre.
In Army of the Dead, a mercenary team is tasked with pulling off a $200 million heist in the zombie-overrun Las Vegas. The film also introduced a new breed of far more intelligent zombies known as Alphas, led by their king, Zeus (Richard Cetrone). Army of the Dead was generally positively received, and despite not being a nominee for any actual awards, the movie had a noteworthy presence at the 2022 Oscars.
In one of the 2022 Oscars' big surprises, in an effort to get younger, general audiences to tune into the show, two new non-award categories were created in the form of Oscars Fan Favorite and Oscars Cheer Moment, with the winners determined by online voting. Army of the Dead emerged as the winner of the Oscars Fan Favorite award. Zack Snyder's Justice League would also win the Oscars Cheer Moment poll for the climactic Speed Force sequence of The Flash (Ezra Miller). In the case of Army of the Dead, its win further highlighted what Warner Bros. lost with Snyder making the film at Netflix.
Army of the Dead was originally meant to be produced and released by Warner Bros. After years of development hell, Snyder ultimately took the film to Netflix, and used it as the basis for an entire zombie universe. 2021 also saw the release of the prequel movie Army of Thieves, directed by Matthias Schweighöfer and centered on his Army of the Dead character Ludwig Dieter. An animated prequel series Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas is also in the works, along with a direct sequel, Planet of the Dead.
Warner Bros. continues to take plenty of criticism from one corner of the internet for their mishandling and extensive reshooting of Justice League, which led directly into the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut fan campaign. However, the strong reception to Army of the Dead shows that the studio lost a major zombie franchise that could've been theirs when Snyder partnered with Netflix to make it. While the Oscars Cheer Moment win of Zack Snyder's Justice League brought WB's mistakes with that film right back into the spotlight, Army of the Dead's win highlighted a squandered opportunity on the studio's part.
The 94th Academy Awards were mostly eclipsed by Will Smith's onstage confrontation with Chris Rock. Still, both of Snyder's 2021 movies being showcased at the Oscars was a reminder of not one but two franchises that Warner Bros. made severe missteps with. Stemming from how unprecedented its eventual release was, Zack Snyder's Justice League has gotten a lot of attention thanks to the severity the studio's bungling. Army of the Dead shows that Warner Bros., sadly, made mistakes with other projects under development by Snyder. Now, he's turned it into a viable franchise, but Warner Bros. will never reap the rewards.