#ReleaseTheSnyderCut Movement Begins With A Timeline And Emotional Tribute

THE FALL

August 9th, 2017: Zack post a picture on Vero of Cyborg and captions it I <3 RF.

August 11th, 2017: Rumor states Joss Whedon has rewritten the entire 3rd act and ending of Justice League. At the same time, rumors come out that Zack’s initial cut of Justice League is deemed “unwatchable” from unnamed sources.

• To recap, yesterday we learned that Warner Bros. was apparently unhappy with a few things in Justice League. Namely, the tone – which they felt was too dark – and the portrayal of Cyborg. Now, Batman-On-Film has added onto that, telling us that the situation is much worse than it appears. Here’s what they had to say:
  • These reshoots – which are still taking place – are not standard pick-ups/additional photography. Why? Apparently, an early cut of the film was deemed “unwatchable.” Thus, substantial changes to the film were ordered.
• Again, though, Batman-On-Film’s report hasn’t been confirmed yet and until it is, we’ll wait for Justice League to swoop into theaters on November 17th to see for ourselves. After all, reshoots aren’t always a bad sign and many blockbusters have went through significant ones and emerged as fantastic finished products (see: Rogue One). At this point, only time will tell.

August 23rd, 2017: Rumor states that Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor cameo is cut from Justice League.

August 29th, 2017: Joss Whedon officially gets writer credit on Justice League.

September 19th, 2017: Zack talks about Snow Steam Iron

• SIX MONTHS AGO, in the face of tragedy, Zack Snyder stepped away from the upcoming Justice League movie. While the director and his wife dealt with the death of their 20-year-old daughter, Autumn, Joss Whedon stepped in to finish the film—and changed the conversation around Justice League considerably. Almost immediately, questions of how this one movie would perform shifted to speculation about how Snyder’s departure would affect DC Entertainment’s overall cinematic future (and how the arrival of Whedon—previously a Marvel man—might do the same). What was never asked, and never announced, was what Zack Snyder would do next.

September 22nd, 2017: Kiesey Clemons’ Iris West Character is said to be cut from Justice League.

September 28th, 2017: Zack post a picture of a storyboard of the Kent house for sale on Vero. (What else is for sale??)

September 29th, 2017: Zack post a picture of the storyboard of the Tribes of Men burying the Motherbox on Vero. (Coincidence or…not, something got buried)

September 29th, 2017: Geoff Johns and Diane Nelson talk about their thoughts on Man of Steel and the DC Films

• If the story of DC Entertainment’s rise were a comic book, it might be one of those comics starring an unlikely pairing of mismatched protagonists. Call them Geek Lad and Executive Woman. Johns is every inch an Über-nerd, having read comics his entire life and practically memorized whole reams of them; Nelson had hardly ever lifted a comic book prior to getting her current job. Johns is eternally in the public eye, cheerily giving interviews to even the flimsiest geek blogs to tout the company line; Nelson rarely talks to journalists and mostly operates in the background. Johns built a career as a DC Comics writer after getting his first gig there in 1999; Nelson navigated Warner’s C-suite and distinguished herself by managing the company’s Harry Potter brand. But in the pivotal year of 2009, they were brought together to face a common foe: the threat posed to Warner by Marvel.
• Nelson and her team didn’t have — and would never have — that kind of direct influence over any of the other mediums in which their superheroes appeared. When it came to all other divisions, Nelson would have to play nice. That meant a need for a new role, one whose borders would be blurry and whose responsibilities would be multitudinous: a chief creative officer who would act as liaison to the rest of Warner. Johns was DC’s golden boy at the time, penning hit stories about the company’s biggest characters and stoking interest in many of their lesser-known ones, too. What’s more, he had Hollywood experience: Before working at DC, he’d been an intern and production assistant for production house Donners’ Company. After a series of conversations, Nelson concluded that she’d found in Johns a perfect candidate and anointed him as her CCO.
• Around the same time, a film initiative that took up much of nascent DC Entertainment’s attention was a 2011 movie about Johns’s beloved Green Lantern, which had been in development long before DC reorganized. Ryan Reynolds was the star, Blake Lively was the female lead, and Warner had plans to build it out with at least one sequel. DC wasn’t closely involved in the film’s development, but Johns was a consultant and cheerleader, and director Martin Campbell recalls meeting with him to talk about the ins and outs of the character. DC offered support where they could: Johns’s office coordinated with others at Warner to help create a Green Lantern animated movie and a Green Lantern CGI kids’ cartoon. Expectations were steep.
• Nelson and Johns faced further cinematic frustration: During the development of Man of Steel, they were marginalized creatively. It was a decidedly gritty take on Superman, and its final battle featured him remorselessly destroying skyscrapers and ultimately executing his foe, General Zod. This didn’t sit right with Johns. “Geoff Johns and Diane were reading scripts, and Geoff Johns, to his credit, was concerned that there was not enough lightness or humor, given who the character is,” recalls one person with knowledge of the making of Man of Steel. “Geoff definitely raised that point, but that current administration didn’t care that much about what Geoff Johns thought.” The movie came out in June 2013 with the DC Entertainment branding, but largely without its fingerprints.
• The DC cinematic universe made a splash two months prior to Rebirth with the troubled, March 2016 release of the Snyder-directed Batman v Superman, which had, like its predecessor, kept Johns and DC at arm’s length creatively. The similarly gritty Suicide Squad was in the middle of its own difficult post-production at the same time, reportedly going through massive re-edits to make it closer to the tone of an early trailer. When BvS flopped critically, there was finally concern about the creative choices that had been made up to that point. Johns and Berg, newly installed, swiftly decided that a core element of their new strategy would be a lightening of the previously sludge-dark mood. All of a sudden, you saw Johns doing interviews where he’d talk about how the DC mythology is built on “hope and optimism.” Berg was on the same page. “We talk about four things,” Berg says. “Heart, heroics, humanity, and humor.”
• However, there’s still a spandex-clad elephant in the room: this November’s Justice League. Its optics haven’t been great. Right after BvS’s backlash hit, the fact that Snyder would also be in charge of Justice League cast a pall over the latter effort among the movie commentariat. There were internal discussions about how to revamp parts of the movie. Johns and Berg mulled the idea of having someone other than Snyder write new scenes for the film. By coincidence, the writer-director of Marvel’s The Avengers, Joss Whedon, met with Johns and Berg to discuss creating a movie with them. The pair were game for that (they eventually chose one about Batman ally Batgirl), but later realized they could accomplish another goal: “Everyone was excited about Joss being a part of DC, and we thought he’d be great to write the [Justice League] scenes, the additional-photography scenes that we wanted to get,” Johns recalls.
• That choice took on added import when tragedy hit Justice League soon afterward: Snyder’s daughter died by suicide in March of this year. The director remained attached to the film for a few months, but on May 22, he announced he would be departing to grieve, leaving the remainder of the film to Whedon. Since then, rumors about the picture have come out in dribs and drabs: Whedon has allegedly rewritten a third of the film, including the ending; the Justice League sequel that was announced in 2014 was very notably not mentioned at a Comic-Con presentation, compounding speculation that it’s not going to happen; there are reports of expensive, difficult-to-coordinate, last-minute reshoots; and so on. DC and Warner don’t comment on these rumors, but it hasn’t added up to a great image for the mega-tentpole.
• When I ask Johns about the criticism that it seems like there’s no strategy, he shows a rare break from his usual buoyancy. “Some of the stuff is true, some of it isn’t true,” he says. “When we talk about things or we’re making deals for people to develop scripts or whatever, sometimes, things leak; sometimes, things are misreported, and it’s frustrating. Because we do wanna go out there and talk about what our strategy is, and this stuff just muddies the water. There’s a lot of internal conversations going on about, How do we help kind of clean that up a bit?”
• When Johns was out promoting Rebirth, he was asked about what made the DC characters distinctive. His reply encapsulated the challenge his company faces. “The iconography and the representation of the ideals they embody mean so much to people,” he said. “There’s a lot of emotional underpinning of the characters and the stories. But when it’s not there, you really feel that emptiness.”

October 8th, 2017: The Justice League trailer is released showing Clark on the Kent Farm which Zack then post the original storyboard of that scene on Vero saying “I’ll take that as a yes” indicating that it was his shot. However, it was cut from the film and replaced with “Itchy”.

October 14th, 2017: Kevin Feige talks about Geoff Johns

• Earlier this week, Heroic Hollywood editor in chief and reporter at The Wrap Umberto Gonzalez sat down for a one on one interview with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige at the Thor: Ragnarok junket in Beverly Hills. With many studios trying to start their own cinematic universes, he asked Feige what he thought DC could learn from the MCU. Feige responded:
  • “I don’t know. I’m not one to bestow advice onto others. I think you can look at what they did with ‘Wonder Woman’ and they’ve figured that out. I’ve got great confidence in Geoff Johns over there and now Joss Whedon helping them out that just makes me excited as a fan to see what’s next.”

October 15th, 2017: It’s revealed Diane Nelson’s true thoughts on Zack’s Vision

• Last month Vulture published a big piece on the future of DC movies that featured interviews with DC Films head Geoff Johns and DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson. Abraham Riesman, who did the interviews and wrote the article for Vulture, was a guest on a recent episode of the BOF podcast and revealed an interesting quote that didn’t make it into his story.
  • “That was actually a quote that didn’t show up in the finished piece, but that Diane [Nelson] gave me,” Riesman recalled. “It was to the effect of ‘we are a director driven place and Zack [Snyder] had a vision that didn’t necessarily sync up with what our vision of these characters is, but we respect that he wanted to go for that and that’s part of our philosophy’.”

October 17th, 2017: Zack begins to reveal BTS of Justice League on Vero until the release date even though he did not need to do this.

October 18th, 2017: Zack shows the Central City population sign from Justice League. followed by several photos of things that did NOT end up in Justice League.

October 23rd, 2017: Justice League runtime is revealed to be 2 hours.

October 25th, 2017: Diane Nelson writes this message and then deletes all social media.

• I have lost (In Business)My best friend;My reality touchstone;My partner and positive reinforcement behind hard or controversial ideas;My resource in learning about the genre I now manage and how its fans think about what we do. The “insider” perspective I may miss;A buddy who shares the excitement and humility of forging new ground and thinking of new ways to tackle a challenging, maybe softening business. Someone who is confident in his knowledge and instincts but can remain open to hearing another idea.A confidant, with whom you can share the many ups and downs of our daily work, without wearing the hat of supervisor or supervisee. Someone with whom I can laugh. Someone with whom I can cry when it all feels bigger than it is.
• The rest of the message begins “I imagine it’s like a much safer version of” but then cuts off. Nelson was talking about Geoff Johns, also DC President and Chief Creative Officer but who reports in to Diane Nelson. Or, at least he did. Her post, which reads in some fashion as mourning someone’s passing, suggests otherwise.
• DC declined to comment on Nelson’s statement directly but told me “Geoff is not moving over to Theatrical, or any other WB division, at this time. He will continue to work across all divisions as he has been, and not exclusively for one division.” Note the phrasing “at this time” and we have noted Geoff’s likelihood to continue working in comics to some degree. But change seems to have come. At some point, it is likely that press releases will reflect this.

November 6th, 2018: Justice League runtime was mandated by CEO of Warner Bros. 

November 8th, 2017: Kevin Feige calls for a truce among the fans.

• In an interview with Crave, Feige called for fan peace, reiterating that the competition only exists in the minds of fans, and that behind-the-scenes, filmmakers and actors from both cinematic universes get along quite nicely:
  • “I think it’s ridiculous. I think movies are awesome and people should go out and support awesome movies, and I go support those movies and I thought Wonder Woman was awesome…I can’t wait to see what Geoff Johns and Joss [Whedon] and the gang has done with Justice League. I guess people like rivalries, I guess? I don’t know. But I’m seeing Geoff Johns in a couple weeks for dinner. We went to this [Richard] Donner event together. Dick’s Superman is still the best archetype of superhero films. So yeah, just go see cool movies. What are you fighting about?”
• This echoes what Feige has said in the past. Earlier this year, Feige told Cinema Blend:
  • “There’s not really a rivalry. A rivalry is much more amongst the press, I think. Geoff Johns [at DC] is a very good friend of mine. We grew up together in the business…So, I applaud all the successes he has. And I really just look at it as a fan. When the movies perform well and are well-received, it’s good for us – which is why I’m always rooting for them.”

 

November 17th, 2017: Justice League gets released. I can’t fall asleep that night.

November 18th, 2017: Leaked footage of several scenes are released from Justice League, including The Flash saving Iris West that was never shown in the theatrical cut of the film but was partially kept in every trailer before release. Outrage ensues.

November 18th, 2017: Danny Elfman reveals he had to work on storyboards of scenes to score the soundtrack.

• Composer Danny Elfman didn’t have a lot of time to decide to step back into the world of DC with Justice League.
• The film was in flux after director Zack Snyder stepped away in May following the death of his daughter, and filmmaker Joss Whedon was brought in to write additional scenes and oversee reshoots and postproduction. Whedon also made another change, ushering out Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice composer Antonius Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL.
  • “I got the call from Joss very last-second,” Elfman tells Heat Vision. “I got the call and it was, ‘You have to decide now and then go to work tomorrow.’”
• There’s been plenty of speculation about how much of the final product is Snyder’s and how much is Whedon’s. Elfman says that much of the film was being shot as he wrote the score, and that he never scored any of the retooled Snyder footage that didn’t make it into the film. Things were so last-minute that at times he wouldn’t be composing to actual footage.
  • “I had a lot of storyboards in place of action. There would be full scenes and then a five-minute sequence of storyboards. Honestly, it was like working on an animated film,” says Elman. “I didn’t score any of the unused footage — the movie that came out is the movie I scored, it was just in very rough form.”
• “I’ve only worked with [Whedon] twice and it’s been under those circumstances,” says Elfman. “With Avengers, it was trickier because I was working around half a score. So, I had to rescore either half or two-thirds of the film, and that made for a squirrelly process. On Justice League, it was a blank slate. I only had to work around a Leonard Cohen song.”
• Whedon turned Elfman loose on the Justice League score, asking only that he add humanity, warmth and some fan payoffs, including restoring his original theme from 1989’s Batman into the Dark Knight’s mythos, as well as bringing in John Williams’ classic Superman theme.
• “I twisted it and my Batman theme … the DNA is there, but the themes aren’t necessarily obvious in the film. Except for one specific moment in the final battle,” says Elfman. “Joss said, ‘Let’s do it [Batman’s theme] on the nose. Fans love this kind of stuff.’”
• Elfman also has strong words for reboots and reinterpretations of character themes. Batman, for instance, has had numerous themes over the years, courtesy of Hans Zimmer’s work on the Dark Knight trilogy, as well as his Junkie XL collaboration for Dawn of Justice. 
  • “The whole concept that every time a superhero franchise is rebooted with a new director, then you have to start the music from scratch, is a bullshit idea. It’s only for the ego of the director or the composer,” says Elfman. “They need to learn the incredible lesson that Star Wars and James Bond have known for ages, which is that keeping these musical connections alive is incredibly satisfying for the people who see those films.” 
  • “It would’ve been crazy to exclude it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a decade old or 70 years old,” says Elfman. “Give me a reboot of any old film and I can take the themes and use them in a way that feels fresh.”
  • “There’s like four different Spider-Man themes at this point, and as a result, he doesn’t have a recognizable sound,” he says. “I told the guys at DC, ‘You have a great musical heritage that you should be proud of, and you should keep it alive.’ And they agreed with me, which is refreshing.”
  • “I use the Wonder Woman’s theme twice. The first time you see her, it’s a really heroic moment, but having heavy electric guitars or that effects-heavy sound would’ve made it feel campy or funny,” says Elfman. “It’s a great melody and I was able to find a way to make it feel grand, which is what that moment needed. Now, when she’s running the second time and bouncing bullets off her bracelets, I thought, ‘This can be the fun moment,’ and I added in guitars, although it got drowned in the mix.”

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