Variety has published an in-depth interview with Zack Snyder, who opens up about "having the DC superhero universe taken" from him after helming several DC movies for Warner Bros. and putting his stamp on many more.
"The circumstances around it were so particular. It just kind of crawled over me. What was happening with me and my family was so intense."
Though Snyder has always been fairly gracious and diplomatic when discussing the fallout from his stepping away as director of Justice League following the tragic death of his daughter, Autumn, it seems clear that his relationship with the studio had been strained to at least some degree, and - as we now know thanks to the release of his director's cut - the movie Joss Whedon delivered was nothing close to Snyder's original vision.
"It was so loud — that part was so loud — that, in retrospect, asking, 'How’s the movie going?' And they go, 'Oh, it’s fine! They’re doing some reshoots.' And I go, 'Oh, OK. [frick] it.' So, Debbie went and watched the Joss [Whedon] version of the movie, and to have her come back to me and say, 'You can never see that movie,' and to realize then that it was 60 pages of rewrites that they did for it… I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t know."
Snyder says that the studio fought him on his "vision for the DC universe" and wanted more control, which he does understand. However, he also believes that at least some of the people in charge at the time saw an opportunity to take over after his daughter's death. “This thing that happened to Zack is a window for us to take the movie back now.”
"But there was this catharsis of, I met with this executive at Warner Bros. who’s long gone since — I won’t say who it was — and he said to me, 'You know, Zack, I’ve got to tell you one thing: You were right about everything.' And I was like, 'That’s kind of you.' And he goes, 'We were fighting you, and in the end you were right.'”
Snyder was asked about James Gunn and Peter Safran heading up DC Studios, and revealed that he still hasn't seen Superman or Supergirl.
"I haven’t seen the movies. It’s a little bit too personal for me. Too soon, I guess you could say. I do like James [Gunn]. And I do have an appreciation for his [vision]."
The filmmaker also confirmed that Gunn did consult him about the new super-suit David Corenswet wore in the movie, but it doesn't sound like the DC Studios co-CEO followed his advice!
"He asked me a question about the underwear. You know, I can’t even remember now, but I think it was about the underwear. Sorry, but I’m going to do a little diatribe. Watchmen is a superhero deconstruction film — neuroses, sexual impotence around their costumes, the fetishism, everything. You can’t undo that. I think about everything that way. So, the underwear on the outside of the superhero costume comes from Victorian strongmen. The Victorians were so prudish that they’d wear flesh-colored leotards and then put the underwear over it. That’s how it started. It was really just a reflection of the Victorians not wanting to show any real skin due to their prudish fear of nakedness. So to me, that’s such a dinosaur. We don’t feel that way anymore. We live in an era where we’re OK without putting the underwear on. But maybe we’re not OK! Maybe the message is that you put the underwear back on Superman because we haven’t moved on from our Victorian prudishness. But I thought we had!"
Finally, Snyder explained why a live-action adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns is the one DC movie he would still like to direct.
"The reason why it’s The Dark Knight Returns, if anyone would ever let me do it outside of the DC Universe since it’s a novel that just happens to have superheroes in it, is if I could do Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, those two books next to each other, to me, represent the complete cycle of the superhero comic book medium. You can do no more than those two books. Watchmen came at the beginning of the superhero movie phase, so it would be super fitting to have The Dark Knight Returns come now, at what I would say is possibly — I don’t want to call it the twilight, but we’re down the road of the superhero movie genre, and I think audiences would understand the why of it. Let’s not forget: The Dark Knight Returns was written for a comic book audience that was very exhausted by comic books in the same way that Watchmen was, so having that movie written now for people who are exhausted by comic book movies would be a good time."
Could we see Snyder step behind the camera for another DC Comics-based film at some point?
Snyder and Gunn have been in contact since the news that the DCEU was being rebooted as the DCU was announced, but the chances of the former returning to the fold seem pretty slim. Still, the fact that Gunn and DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran will continue to develop Elseworlds projects means we can't completely rule anything out.