Kevin Smith Says The Snyder Cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE Exists and Explains Why Warner Bros. Should Release It
The Snyder Cut of Justice League is an interesting beast. Depending on who you talk to, you’ll hear slightly different reports of whether or not it even exists. Well, Kevin Smith was recently on the podcast ReelBlend where he was mostly talking about his films but was asked about the Snyder Cut at which point he says that he knows it exists solely based on conversations with people and has not seen it firsthand.
He also goes on to explain that he thinks people misunderstand what the Snyder Cut is. He explains that it is not a finished product and is lacking VFX and a few other things. Smith then says that Warner Bros. should release it if for no other reason than it would make them a bit of money.
“I’ve not seen it firsthand. And also to be clear, I know Zack, but it’s not like, ‘We’re fucking tight son!’ … That being said, I’ve spoken now to enough people at various levels in that production. There IS a Snyder cut. For sure. That’s not a mythical beast. It exists. Now, it’s not a finished movie by any stretch of the imagination. There were things that went away from the story that they shot that didn’t wind up going into (visual) effects or anything like that. So I would assume, based on what I’ve been told, that large sections of that Snyder Cut are, you know, pre-viz (with) a lot of green screen. We’re not talking a finished movie. When people hear ‘Snyder Cut’ in their heads, they think about, like, a DVD they’ve seen of an extended cut or something that’s finished. The ‘Snyder Cut’ that, again I haven’t seen, but the one I’ve heard everyone speak of was never a finished film. It was a movie that people in production could watch and fill in the blanks. It was certainly not meant for mass consumption.
I feel confident that the audience could handle that cut of the movie without being like… I think there’s a common thought process, probably within the studio – and again, no studio has said this to me, but I would assume that they’re like, ‘We can’t show people this. Yes, there is a Snyder Cut, but no audience would be able to look at this and see what the director’s intent was.’ I disagree. That would seem like common wisdom because everyone always wants to put their best foot forward. But I think the audience now, particularly the audience that would consume the Snyder Cut and discuss it at great length, can watch a work print. They can watch a work-in-progress and fill in the blanks in their heads.
Every studio likes to make money. They do multiple incarnations of movies on video all the time. This could just be one more of those. All they have to do is lend their audience a little more credence to be like, ‘Look, they’ll get it.’ Put up a bunch of fucking disclaimers, including one from Zack himself at the head of it going, ‘Obviously the movie wasn’t finished, but here’s what we were thinking.’ There’s definitely a way to do it. … They could definitely shoot a version of that flick where, you know, they put [Snyder] into it explaining what would have went here, what went there.”
You can listen to the full episode of the podcast at the link above with the Snyder Cut conversation starting around the 1:11:10 mark. Would you want to see the Snyder Cut even if it’s not a finished film?