When ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, it will be the culmination of the years-long campaign by Snyder’s fans, marked by the ubiquitous hashtag #ReleasetheSnyderCut. In November 2019, several “Justice League” stars – including Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot – joined Snyder to tweet the hashtag, a critical stamp of approval for the campaign that helped Warner Bros. chief Toby Emmerich, to convince Snyder to allow his original vision for the film.
However, the same stars were not particularly in the campaign to promote the release of the film. To be sure, Affleck, Gadot, Jason Momoa and Ray Fisher all posted trailers and posters for the Snyder track on their respective Twitter and Instagram accounts, and Henry Cavill joined Snyder in May for the official announcement that the Cutter cut really takes place. . Affleck, Gadot, Cavill, Fisher and Ezra Miller also promoted the Snyder track during the DC Fandome fans in August.
But in the critical weeks leading up to the premiere of ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ on HBO Max, none of these actors participated in the standard methods of promoting a film of this size: junket interviews, talk shows, press conferences, presenters on awards shows. Instead, Snyder and his wife and producing partner Deborah Snyder applied the weight of promoting the new “Justice League” on their own.
In a larger interview with Variety about the new “Justice League”, the Snyders say that they at least stood behind the promotion of the actors for the film.
“We’ll provide things to the cast,” said Deborah Snyder.
“I’ll just go,” Jason [Momoa], here’s the new trailer, ” says Zack Snyder. “He will be like, ‘Thank you, brother! “It was not like a real coordinated effort. ‘
Deborah Snyder adds that HBO Max also helped distribute social media assets for the film, something that sources familiar with the plans for ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ reflect. But privately, these sources also sound like a similar refrain: this film is really Snyder’s baby, and it’s he who deserves to be for it. Aside from social media reports, these sources say, HBO Max has not pursued a major campaign with the cast. It would presumably also cost more money to fetch the A-list stars of the film for a new interview.
Any contractual obligations to promote ‘Justice League’ were probably met in 2017’s theater release. But Snyder said HBO Max spent about $ 70 million to complete the film, and from the beginning the Snyder track was announced as an exhibition for the still-emerging streaming service, which so far could not get anywhere near the subscriber base. . of its main competitors, Netflix and Disney Plus. Why would Warner Media and HBO Max not actually enlist its biggest stars to maximize attention for the movie and hopefully drive the public to subscribe to the service?
One factor influencing the PR rollout for the Snyder track is, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of a splashy red carpet premiere, for example, Snyder joins filmmaker Kevin Smith online Wednesday night for a “virtual premiere” event. But Variety has learned that HBO Max reached out to at least some of the “Justice League” actors last week to ask if they could submit a quick video to say hello to the fans, with a final push Monday. It is unclear at press time whether any of the actors could have done so.
Several of the core members of the Justice League cast are also working on other projects. Affleck shoots ‘The Tender Bar’ with director (and former Batman) George Clooney; Affleck’s will apparently also play his role as Batman in ‘The Flash’ with Miller and director Andy Muschietti. Miller, meanwhile, is finishing the third film, “Fantastic Beasts.” And Gadot, who recently ran an overall campaign for the HBO Max release of ‘Wonder Woman 1984’, promoted the National Geographic documentation ‘Impact’, which he executive produces.
If the pandemic has made something easier, do promotional interviews again. It’s much easier for A-list talent to jump a few minutes from Zoom (or a hotel or a trailer) to Zoom than to work days or weeks out of their schedules for a traditional press tour.
The only member of the core of the “Justice League” cast to aggressively promote “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” in recent weeks is Fisher, who is regularly posted on Twitter and Instagram about the film, and has repeatedly involved the fanbase to to drum up more. excitement. However, Fisher has also been embroiled in a protracted public battle with WarnerMedia over how the company handled its allegations of misconduct in the “Justice League” set up in 2017 after Snyder left the project due to a family tragedy. Fisher accused Joss Whedon, who was brought in to complete the film, of “gross, insulting, unprofessional and completely unacceptable” behavior, according to a viral tweet he sent in July.
Gadot and Momoa publicly supported Fisher, and Gadot even asked questions about Fisher’s allegations while promoting ‘WW84’.
But over the past few weeks, WarnerMedia executives have made it clear they want to continue the dispute with Fisher – the company completed its investigation in December and announced that unspecified ‘corrective action’ had been taken. Any interviews that do the cast over the Snyder cut will inevitably give the Fisher story more oxygen; Snyder himself was questioned in recent interviews about Fisher’s allegations. (Meanwhile, Miller has not yet publicly addressed a video that appeared last April in which he apparently strangled a woman outside a bar in Iceland.)
Another factor may be just the unique nature of the Snyder cut itself. More than just any studio film of its size, the film was explicitly created to satisfy the desire of a core fan base, which aims to bring the project to fruition effectively through an ongoing campaign on social media. The fans are therefore the place where the Snyders say they kept their attention to promote the film, or not.
“It was very organic for me to stay with the fans and with the movement that made it happen,” said Zack Snyder. “At one point, there was a discussion about whether my fans had the width or range to create enough buzz. I was like, well, these are the guys that Warner Bros. gladly convinced to do the crazy thing they just did. ‘
“We’ve marketed a lot of these movies and never done that before,” adds Deborah Snyder. “But I think we just want us to keep up with everything and keep the social media campaign alive.”
Retaining the commitment to the fans was paramount, especially after some fans also started using the campaign to raise money for suicide prevention in honor of Zack Snyder’s daughter Autumn, whose death by suicide led to his decision to leave “Justice League” – and to return to the full his vision.
“The fans and the charity components were things that, without them, just wouldn’t have started for us,” says Deborah Snyder. “It was important for us to have respect for the fans, and not suddenly go: ‘Okay, thank you for reaching us up to this point, now we’re going to do this other thing and you’re not going to be involved. ‘”