HBO Max is still missing standout talking point in its original content like The Mandalorian was for Disney+, but they have the perfect candidate in Zack Snyder's Justice League - if it's released as a streaming series. HBO Max is in need of a tentpole property that can keep people talking about the platform week to week, and between Zack Snyder's 5-hour Justice League assembly cut and some additional photography proposed by Zack Snyder, the Snyder Cut could become exactly that.
Disney+ launched on November 12, 2019, with most of Disney's massive catalog, including selections from Fox, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and National Geographic, but the biggest talking point for the first few months was The Mandalorian. Despite boasting one of the most impressive libraries of content in the industry, the biggest buzz around Disney+ was the weekly drops of the first live-action Star Wars tv show. With HBO Max's official May 27th launch fast approaching, it doesn't yet have any content that could match The Mandalorian's buzz, but with Zack Snyder's Justice League, they could change that.
After Zack Snyder departed Justice League and the movie was heavily rewritten and reshot by Joss Whedon, the campaign for the Snyder Cut was born. It's been a hot talking point for over 2 1/2 years as we've slowly learned more and more about not only how drastically different it was than the theatrical cut, but also how it was far more complete than anyone realized. As fans campaigned, Snyder teased more and more, eventually even announcing a desire to shoot additional scenes and officially retitling the movie as Zack Snyder's Justice League. The release of the Snyder Cut is inevitable, so the only questions are when and how, and the answer is on HBO Max as a miniseries.
HBO Max Needs More New Flagship Content
HBO Max is launching with a stacked library of some of the greatest films and shows in history, but its original content at launch is a letdown. While the service is expected to get some great new original movies and shows in the future, it's still missing something important: tentpole content.
Tentpole content is important in the way it stands out from the crowd and supports the rest of the library. When it comes to streaming platforms and the content wars, tentpole content draws attention to the platform in the first place, then the rest of the content is (hopefully) what gets people to stay. Netflix has shows like the Marvel shows, The Witcher, and Stranger Things; Amazon Prime has shows like The Boys, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Devs; Hulu has shows like The Handmaid's Tale; and Disney Plus has The Mandalorian with more Star Wars and Marvel shows on the way.
HBO Max has announced plans for a Green Lantern show, which would certainly qualify as the kind of tentpole content we're looking for, but it hasn't even started shooting yet, and with coronavirus delays, it's not going to arrive for a couple of years.
Coronavirus is Preventing New Content Creation
While Green Lantern is delayed, it's certainly not enough on its own to provide the kind of fresh tentpole content HBO Max needs anyway. Plans for a J.J. Abrams-produced Justice League Dark were announced, but that's even farther away than Green Lantern. At this point, HBO Max can't even try to fast-track additional new content because coronavirus delays will also prevent it from actually getting shot any time soon, landing it in the same boat as the other delayed DC shows.
There's been a push for some blockbusters to premiere on HBO Max instead of a theatrical opening, but given the drama surrounding Universal releasing Trolls World Tour straight to VOD, the notion of something like Wonder Woman 1984 or The Suicide Squad landing on HBO Max is even crazier. Even if Warner Media decided to risk its relationship with theater owners with such a move, they'd be cannibalizing Warner Bros.' future slate, leaving them without their biggest draws once theaters open back up.
Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League is the exception to this situation. It's drastically different from the theatrical cut (estimates say only around 30 minutes of its nearly 3 1/2 hour runtime appears in the theatrical cut), so it's basically new content. It was also trending #1 worldwide on Twitter back in November, and it's a constantly hot talking point, so its status as a potential as a flagship show is unquestionable. But most importantly, principal photography is already completed, the movie's VFX supervisors even said a significant amount of the visual effects are completed, and Tom Holkenborg, has confirmed that he finished scoring the soundtrack. Snyder did indicate he wants to do some additional photography, but with things slowly opening back up, that's not entirely out of the question for a smaller shoot that can maintain social distancing (Snyder is well-practiced at running a small crew).
With so much work already put into a mostly unseen but highly publicized property, HBO Max would be wise to expedite the completion of Zack Snyder's Justice League, and, as an extra twist, release it as a miniseries, like Quentin Tarantino's episodic extended cut of The Hateful Eight on Netflix.
How a Zack Snyder's Justice League Streaming Series is a Win-Win Scenario
Releasing the Snyder Cut as an HBO Max streaming series instead of a single film has a number of benefits for both Snyder and HBO Max. First, one of the biggest questions about the potential release of the Snyder Cut is how it would be handled from a PR angle. Due to the heavily publicized behind the scenes issues and glaringly obvious differences in the Whedon cut vs Snyder's, it'd be hard for Warner Bros. to release it without it being seen as a massive condemnation of the decision-making that led to the creation of the Whedon cut in the first place. While the studio did make a massive mistake in the way it handled the situation, admitting wrongdoing isn't usually something that happens in Hollywood. Fortunately, releasing as a series (and following up with a movie cut later) provides a number of outs.
HBO Max is a totally different entity from Warner Bros.. Both fall under the Warner Media Group umbrella, but HBO Max is run by WMG's new CEO Jason Kilar, not Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff (who reports directly to Kilar), so when it comes to optics, WB isn't having to admit any fault or wrongdoing (which makes it a lot easier for decisionmakers to sign off on such a deal). Also, releasing it as a series separates it even more from the theatrical debacle, and most casual viewers likely won't even know the complicated backstory of what they're watching.
Second, and possibly more significant, converting it to a miniseries helps justify the additional investment to not only complete the VFX and other lingering details from Snyder's original cut, but also go even further with the additional photography teased by Snyder. It's not exactly clear what the purpose of the additional photography is, but we previously speculated it could be changing additional elements to be more in-line with the original script written by Snyder and Chris Terrio, which was subjected to a rewrite immediately following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Snyder has since said he shot most of what was in that version of the script other than a "really scary idea," presumably Lois getting murdered in the Batcave by Darkseid.
Estimates to simply finish Snyder's cut ran from as much as $30-$40 million, but if Zack Snyder's Justice League ends up in episodic format and drops weekly, ensuring viewers stay subscribed for multiple months, it's easier to justify spending as much as $60-$65 million, which would be in-line with what Warner Max plans to budget for new DC content. That kind of investment would allow Snyder to go even further, possibly implementing additional changes like reverting to his original, scarier design for Steppenwolf (further separating Zack Snyder's Justice League from the Justice League movie seen in theaters in 2017).
Not to mention the week-to-week buzz a Zack Snyder's Justice League series would generate. With event series like Game of Thrones drawing massive audiences to speculate, debate, and predict the show's events between each episode, a Justice League show from Zack Snyder is bound to do the same for HBO Max. Then, when it's all said and done, his definitive cut of the movie could be released with the miniseries being akin to the longer Watchmen: Ultimate Cut with the extra Tales of the Black Freighter animation edited in vs. Snyder's preferred director's cut.
What Happens After Zack Snyder's Justice League is Released?
The money already spent on Justice League is a sunk cost. As it stands, the money was already spent and the movie severely underperformed at the box office, so as far as the accounting is concerned, HBO Max would be getting an epic, massive-scale, highly talked about comic book story featuring some of the most popular characters in the world, starring Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, and Ben Affleck. For less than the price of Birds of Prey, that's as good of a bargain as it gets.
Of course, the big question is "what next?" Zack Snyder's original Justice League plan was to end in a cliffhanger of sorts, setting up a conflict with Darkseid for Justice League 2 and 3 (parts 4 and 5 of a 5-part story). If Zack Snyder's Justice League gets the funding he wants and is released as a miniseries on HBO Max, will part of the additional work change the ending to be a solid conclusion, or will Snyder stick with a cliffhanger, hoping to still finish parts 4 and 5 as movies or additional seasons?
Unfortunately, there are a number of major roadblocks to any Justice League continuation after the Snyder Cut. First, the cast is a complicated situation. Zack Snyder's Justice League is already (mostly) shot, but any continuation would require bringing the actors back. Ben Affleck made a big show of retiring as Batman, Henry Cavill's Superman future is been in limbo for years, and Jason Momoa and Gal Gadot still have their own successful solo franchises. Scheduling issues aside, the cost of bringing back that cast for additional seasons would be prohibitively expensive.
Any dream of a continuation would depend on a number of factors. Cavill has been vocal about his desire to stay as Superman, and in his case, Zack Snyder's Justice League may actually be his best bet to wear the cape again. He's immensely popular as Geralt on Netflix's The Witcher, and who knows, maybe HBO Max would be interested in making a Henry Cavill Superman show since Warner Bros. can't figure out what to do with the character on the big screen.
Ben Affleck would surely be a tougher sell, but he's been vocal about his support for Zack Snyder in the past, indicating Snyder's take on Batman is the only reason he even signed up in the first place and he would do "whatever he can" to help Snyder. Who knows, if HBO Max wants to lock up Affleck, he may be able to be convinced with a larger deal that gets him several projects of his own on the platform, which would be another win-win. Snyder planned to have Batman killed off, so Affleck wouldn't even be signing up for a massive multi-picture deal as Batman, and maybe bringing proper closure to his intended arc will also have an appeal.
As far as HBO Max goes, they're already invested in these characters. They even scrapped their original marketing plan to go with something that emphasized the most popular characters on the platform, as determined by audience survey, and Cavill's Superman and Affleck's Batman were front and center on multiple advertisements (in addition to Momoa's Aquaman and Gadot's Wonder Woman). So, it could be said HBO Max is already all-in on these characters.
The prospects of more Justice League from Snyder and Affleck returning to the role are nothing more than hypotheticals at this point, should the stars magically align, but that's not the only possible fallout of Zack Snyder's Justice League arriving on HBO Max as a miniseries. If the model proves effective, the same thing could be done with the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad, and maybe Snyder could finally get his director's cut of Sucker Punch finished for release as well. Warner Media's vault is full of unreleased projects that could see the light of day, such as the third season of Mortal Kombat: Legacy.
Truth be told, many people would assume Zack Snyder's Justice League getting released in any form in the near future is absurd, so the notion of any kind of continuation would be seen as even more of a pipe-dream. And even though there's a clear demand, and HBO Max offers the perfect platform, that doesn't mean a logical decision will be made. After all, it wasn't logical decisionmaking that got us into this mess with the Snyder Cut in the first place. But we live in a world where the Snyder Cut exists, Zack Snyder is showing it to people, including studio executives, and HBO Max needs the content because of coronavirus. If the stars need to align in order to get the Snyder Cut, this is as close as we're going to get.