Zack Snyder Accused of Weaponizing Toxic Fans Who Used Bots to Get His JUSTICE LEAGUE Cut Released

A new report from Rolling Stone takes a deep dive into director Zack Snyder’s road to getting his four-hour Justice League cut made, and it gets pretty damn crazy! In it, Snyder is accused of weaponizing toxic fans and building an army to spread the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut message and attack those that opposed it, including Warner Bros. executives who were getting in Snyder’s way.

Warner Bros. started to question all of this and wondered how organic Snyder’s Twitter army was, so they hired two investigative cybersecurity firms to look into it. There were two reports submitted, and they found that the massive online support for the Snyder Cut movement was fueled, in part, by bots and inauthentic social media accounts.

They say that at least 13 percent of the accounts that were part of the movement were fake. They explain that the average number of fake accounts that are usually found in any trending topic on social media comes in at around three to five percent. Twitter's own public findings say the number of daily active accounts on the site that are "false or spam" is less than five percent. So Snyder’s army had a little bit more help from bots.

The report concluded: "After researching online conversations about the Snyder Cut of the Justice League's release, specifically the hashtags 'ReleaseTheSnyderCut' and 'RestoreTheSnyderVerse' on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, [the analysts] detected an increase in negative activity created by both real and fake authors. One identified community was made up of real and fake authors that spread negative content about WarnerMedia for not restoring the 'SnyderVerse.' Additionally, three main leaders were identified within the authors' scanned on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — one leader on each platform. These leaders received the highest amount of engagement and have many followers, which gives them the ability to influence public opinion."

I don’t know if you’ve had any run-ins with any of the toxic Snyder fans, but I certainly have! It was always crazy being attacked by them because you had a different opinion on a matter. For example, there was a time when the Zack Snyder cut didn’t really exist, and when I reported on that, the fans would rabidly attack. I still don’t think that the Snyder Cut ever fully existed until WB gave him the $100 million to make it a reality. Hell, these fans posted an image showing the decapitated heads of DC Films President Walter Hamada, former WB Pictures Group Chairman Toby Emmerich, and Geoff Johns, and they were tagging their kids!

They also attacked WB chairman Ann Sarnoff, who called the trolling "reprehensible" and the report stated, "with the majority of authors calling her a liar for the claim that there is no Snyder Cut of the movie and calling for Warner Bros. to fire her. These authors also started using the hashtag "‘BoycottWarnerBros."

The report goes on to say, "That means a fandom amplified by fake accounts helped shake down a major studio and an ultimate cost to Warner Bros. of more than $100 million to re-release a movie that had already bombed years earlier."

The report goes through all of the drama of how Zack Snyder ended up losing Justice League and was ultimately replaced by Joss Whedon, who was apparently involved with the film long before Snyder exited the project. Before he was brought on to direct, he was doing rewrites and consulting on the film while Snyder was working on it. In the end, Whedon took over to reshoot a bunch of stuff and the film turned out to be a mess.

Rolling Stone talked to 20 people at Warner Bros. who were involved with the original Justice League film and the Snyder Cut version, and most of them "believe that the director was working to manipulate the ongoing campaign." But Snyder says, "If anyone was pulling the strings on the social media fervor, it was Warner Bros. trying to leverage my fanbase to bolster subscribers to their new streaming service."

But, one of these sources says that "Zack was like a Lex Luthor wreaking havoc." One story involves how Snyder didn’t want producers Geoff Johns and Jon Berg attached to the Snyder Cut because they didn’t believe in his vision. He kept asking to have their names removed, and when his requests were ignored, the director confronted an executive during the post-production process and threatened, "Geoff and Jon are dragging their feet on taking their names off my cut. Now, I will destroy them on social media."

There are also all the publicity stunts that were implemented to get the Snyder Cut made including the Times Square ad in New York City, which costs more than $50,000 per day. There were a lot of other things, but it was never revealed where the money to do all this was coming from. There was no fundraiser, no Kickstarter, or anything like that.

Snyder ended up getting what he wanted, but the Snyder army wasn't finished yet. As you know, they've continued hounding the suspected "enemies" of Snyder within the studio and have demanded that Snyder be handed the keys to the DCEU kingdom again.

It’s pretty crazy to read these accusations that Snyder was orchestrating all of this behind the scenes as a way to attack those people who stood in his way at the studio and to pressure others to do what he wanted or he’d have his weaponized fans come after them. This is what this article is heavily implying.

The report quotes WB employees who are convinced Snyder personally hired an agency to boost support for his project and then stood back and acted like he didn’t know anything when this toxic fan group went from launching petitions to legitimately harassing, abusing, and bullying people.

Again, Snyder denies all of this, claiming that he doesn't have any influence over these fans. However, the article tells the story of a disgruntled and agitated filmmaker who is willing to go to great lengths to retaliate against those people and executives who he believes have persecuted him, and the report backs it up with some solid evidence.

I don’t know what the truth is! I’ve met Snyder a couple of times, and he was always nice and kind to me. I hope that he wouldn’t stoop to that level! But, read through the article for yourself and you can come to your own conclusion.