As the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League draws ever closer, more information about its seemingly neutered release has been emerging. The original plan of releasing in four-parts was cut down into one four-hour release on HBO Max due to Warner Bros. being unwilling to renegotiate new payment for actors .
It could likely have stemmed from Warner Bros. announcing that its entire 2021 film slate would be released on HBO Max concurrently with theatrical releases. Therefore, there was no longer a necessity to have Zack Snyder's Justice League spread out its release as a series. Many fans have been led to believe that this shows Warner Bros.' willingness to undermine its launch.
One rumor seems to point to one executive at Warner Bros. wanting to do exactly that and wishes to see the release of The Snyder Cut fail.
BURYING WARNER BROS.' MISTAKES
In a video from YouTube film pundit Robert Meyer Burnett, Burnett discusses how Toby Emmerich, chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, didn't want Zack Snyder's Justice League to succeed due to it being a reminder of how the studio treated Zack Snyder. Burnett says that his intel comes from a source close to Warner Bros.
“Toby Emmerich, he doesn't want The Snyder Cut to succeed. He wishes it would just go away. I can't even imagine what it's like to get The Snyder Cut made if you're Toby Emmerich and watch this thing happening because basically what The Snyder Cut is, it basically says 'Everyone at the highest levels of Warner Bros. that worked on Justice League, at the time the Justice League was released, is a fucking idiot.'”
Burnett elaborated that it went further back than Justice League and that the poor treatment began after the release of Man of Steel :
“Now, because they caused all that to happen. They didn't want to push their release date, they fucked Zack Snyder at every turn because after Man of Steel came out everyone was Monday morning quarterbacking and everyone wanted to change this and change that. They're looking at the dailies, and they're like 'Oh, well, this isn't the light and lively movie that we thought we were going to get.'”
Finally, he summarizes what Zack Snyder's Justice League represents to Toby Emmerich and the studio:
“This is a studio thing. The studio really messed up. They really messed up. And they did it to somebody that they had a longstanding relationship with which was even worse.”
The full excerpt can be seen below:
CIRCULAR LOGIC
From what can be understood from Burnett's statement, the gist of why Toby Emmerich supposedly doesn't want to see Zack Snyder's Justice League succeed on HBO Max is because of what it represents. The project is a reminder of how poorly Zack Snyder was treated by Warner Bros. to the point that Burnett (or their source) described it as Snyder having been "f***ed."
Perhaps it would make sense why Zack Snyder seems to be migrating to Netflix to start up his own franchise with them, but this logic with Emmerich doesn't make much sense. Emmerich doesn't want to see Zack Snyder's Justice League be successful on HBO Max because it's a reminder of how poorly they treated Snyder, so their solution is to continue treating Snyder poorly by sabotaging the release of The Snyder Cut on HBO Max?
Although, Emmerich's past actions haven't always been too logical, such as intentionally lowering the budget of 2019's Joker in order to discourage director Todd Phillips from taking the project. So, it's entirely possible that this could be the case again with Emmerich not wanting another project to move forward or, in this case, succeed.
