Zack Snyder’s Justice League is finally coming to the big screen, and it is made possible by none other than Kevin Smith, the filmmaker revealed in the latest episode of his podcast Fatman Beyond. He also noted that this is the first time "The Snyder Cut" is being screened theatrically.
The screening of the movie is a part of a series of screening and Q&A sessions called Directly Responsible: Face-to-Face With Filmmakers At Smodcastle. The bigwigs that’ll make an appearance along with Snyder include Jason Reitman (Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Juno), Joe and Anthony Russo (The Gray Man, Avengers: Infinity War, and Endgame) better known as the Russo brothers. While speaking about the session Smith revealed, "Zack Snyder is coming in the new year, and he was like: 'I've never shown Justice League in a theater once.' So I was like 'brother, bring it!'" The initiative is among many that Smith is undertaking at his newly-purchased theater, in the hopes of making it a fan-favorite destination.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League also known as The Snyder Cut was released as a direct-to-HBO-Max feature during the height of the pandemic in 2021 after fans campaigned for the director’s vision to be realized since he stepped down from the project in 2017 and Avengers’ director Joss Whedon took over to finish the project. Snyder originally planned a 5-movie arc of a shared superhero universe called the DC Extended Universe starting with Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel in 2013. Its success further strengthened the director’s vision, he then introduced Ben Affleck as Batman in 2016s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the movie also introduced Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. The feature got mixed reactions from fans as well as critics. For 2017s Justice League Snyder then introduced Ezra Miller as Flash, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, and Jason Momoa as Aquaman.
When Whedon’s version of Justice League came out in 2017, fans weren’t very happy with it, and thus began the Snyder Cut movement which was realized in 2021. After the merger of Warner Bros with Discovery, earlier this year, fans hoped that the director might get a chance to finish his original arc, however, DC’s Chief Creative Officer and Publisher, Jim Lee revealed during the San Diego Comic-con 2022, that release of Snyder Cut was “Zack's vision realized” and that “there are no plans for additional work on that material.”
Nonetheless, Snyder’s characters live on in the DC universe as Dwayne Johnson-led Black Adam, nods to the Justice League. Furthermore, Miller’s standalone The Flash will open the doors to DC multiverse in June 2023 and Momoa’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom brings Affleck’s Dark Knight once again to the big screen with December 2023 release.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League will screen sometime next year, meanwhile, you can check Smith’s comments below: