Interview
Producer Deborah Snyder Talks With WAMG For ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE
An unprecedented time. An unprecedented opportunity. An army of persuasive fans.
And one very colorful, newly-shot scene.
After four years, director Zack Snyder returns to the DCEU to complete his vision.
It’s a new era. Superman (Henry Cavill) is dead and a new villain channeling a very old evil has arrived. Honoring Superman’s sacrifice, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) must not only work together, but also unite an unlikely group of heroes – Cyborg (Ray Fisher), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and The Flash (Ezra Miller) — to fight Steppenwolf, an eight-foot-tall warrior from the nightmare world of Apokolips who wants to conquer not only the Earth’s population but the planet’s entire existence.
In his 4-hour epic, Snyder not only assembles our heroes, but he and writer Chris Terrio explore the breadth of their backstories, diving into the complexities of their lives — introducing us to Victor Stone’s mother Elinore and Iris West, Barry Allen’s potential love interest. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) gets an emotional story arc, deepening her connection to Superman and his eventual resurrection. Vulko (Willem Dafoe) gives us context for Aquaman’s story. Alongside Cyborg, we experience the full range of Silas Stone’s love for his son.
An extended Justice League allows for extended world building. Never before seen, existing-footage scenes with Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello), Calvin Swanwick/Martian Manhunter (Harry Lennix), and Ryan Choi (Zheng Kai) round out the mythology. We get the opportunity to watch our heroes join forces to eliminate Steppenwolf, much to the chagrin of New God Darkseid, making his first appearance.
And at the end of it all, a chilling, freshly-shot finale with some of our heroes – and one smiling villain.
Even before the 2017 version of the movie was released, there were rumblings from the fans. First it was quiet. Give us the Snyder Cut. After the movie hit theaters in November 2017, it only got louder. #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, people demanded, circulating petitions and pleading with the studio. Once fans learned an actual Snyder Cut existed, they were overjoyed and doubled down on their efforts.
It worked.
Around the time of Comic-con 2019 and 2nd anniversary of Justice League that November, fans began to bombard Warner Bros. with grand gestures – billboards, social media campaigns, even sending airplanes to fly over the studio. Stars Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot publicized their endorsements with #ReleaseTheSnyderCut tweets.
Just like the alternate universes that comic fans are keenly familiar with, this iteration of creating the Snyderverse was an amalgamation of the past and the present. They would use all existing footage from Snyder’s initial shoot, except for one after credits scene that had lived in Snyder’s mind for years. Junkie XL aka Tom Holkenborg, Snyder’s original Justice League composer, came back on to write an entirely new, 4-hour-long score. VFX teams got to work on thousands of shots that had to be done or redone.
Prior to the film’s phenomenal release on HBO MAX (March 18, 2021) as a four-hour plus director’s cut, I spoke with producer Deborah Snyder. (review)
Snyder develops and produces films that are renowned for their striking visuals and thought-provoking storylines, creating an exciting and unique brand of cinematic entertainment. With over a decade of producing top-tier advertising and creating award-winning television commercials before transitioning to feature films, Snyder brings that marketing experience and vision to each project she takes on, building captivating and remarkable marketing campaigns. As Co-Founder of The Stone Quarry, formed with her producing partner Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder has established herself as a producer of note in the entertainment industry.
Snyder is currently developing a wide range of projects under the Stone Quarry banner, including the epic zombie action heist film ARMY OF THE DEAD, which Zack Snyder directed and co-wrote with Shay Hatten for Netflix. The film is set to be released on May 21, 2021. Snyder is currently producing an international ARMY OF THE DEAD prequel feature film directed by and starring Matthias Schweighöfer and will follow his “Ludwig Dieter” character. Through their newly launched animation arm, Stone Quarry Animation, Snyder will executive produce a new original anime series Zack Snyder and Jay Oliva are developing for Netflix, ARMY OF THE DEAD: LOST VEGAS, starring Joe Manganiello, Christian Slater, Harry Lennix, Ross Butler, Anya Chalotra, Vanessa Hudgens, Yetide Badaki, Christina Wren, Monica Barbaro, Jena Malone and Nolan North, as well as an animated series set in the world of Norse mythology also for Netflix. Upcoming, Snyder will produce THE HORSE LATITUDES, also directed by Zack Snyder, in which a photograph becomes the catalyst for a journey two men undertake into the rugged wilderness of South America.
Snyder most recently produced WONDER WOMAN 1984 which was released worldwide on December 25, 2020. The critically acclaimed WONDER WOMAN, broke multiple box-office records and made over $800 million worldwide. She was nominated for a Producers Guild Award and the film was named one of the top 10 of the year by the American Film Institute. Snyder is also executive producing an equally highly anticipated DCEU title THE SUICIDE SQUAD, which will be written by James Gunn and released by Warner Bros. on August 6, 2021. Snyder served as executive producer on David Ayer’s, starring Will Smith, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman and Margot Robbie. The film broke the record for biggest August opening weekend, bringing in $133 million and eventually grossed over $740 million worldwide.
Snyder also produced JUSTICE LEAGUE, which brought together DC’s greatest superheroes – Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ezra Miller as The Flash and Ray Fisher as Cyborg.
She also produced BATMAN VS SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, which grossed over $800 million at the worldwide box office. Additionally, Snyder produced MAN OF STEEL, alongside Zack Snyder, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, which earned over $650 million worldwide. In addition, Snyder served as an executive producer on AQUAMAN, which grossed over $1.1 billion dollars worldwide. Snyder’s current combined box office contributions so far to the DCEU totaling more than 4.9 billion dollars over the past five years.
Snyder produced 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE directed by Noam Murro from a script co-written by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad. The film, which was released by Warner Bros. in March of 2014, is the sequel the 2007 blockbuster 300, which marked her producing debut. 300 took in more than $70 million at the box office in its opening weekend and went on to gross over $450 million worldwide. Together, 300 and 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE grossed nearly $800 million worldwide.
Snyder previously produced SUCKER PUNCH, an action fantasy that follows a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality, written and directed by Zack Snyder; Zack Snyder’s critically acclaimed WATCHMEN; and executive produced the animated adventure LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE.
WAMG: Thank you for talking about the film with us.
Deborah Snyder: I am so happy to be here to talk about the film.
WAMG: The film is amazing and it is the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie we’ve all been waiting for.
DS: Never in our wildest imaginations did we think we would finish it. We just had this version for ourselves. None of this would have been possible if it hadn’t been for the fans.
WAMG: From the #releasethesnyder cut movement on social media after fans found out and you make your presentation to HBO Max… and then COVID hits. How do you keep it a secret?
DS: The hardest part was figuring out the plan without it leaking. We didn’t want it to get out there before there was an agreement or before we could make our own announcement. A few weeks after the two year anniversary of the theatrical release, the fans were like at a 20 with excitement. Their social media activations got bigger and bigger. One evening we got a call from our agent at 6:30pm at night and he said, “are you sitting down, because Warner Media wants to know if you want to release your cut on HBO Max. They don’t really have any money, but you can release the rough cut.” We thought the movie is in disarray, the music is partially finished. It’s not done. There are visual effects to finish, partial storyboards. It wasn’t really viewable for an audience. They came back with, so what would it take?
They really went out to make sure the movie could be put back online. But we needed to get the visual effects artists back, and they’d have to come at night and go through all of it, and the composer had some of the original music so we had to figure out what music had to be done and how to pull all of it together. And it was all done on the down-low because we didn’t want to get hopes up.
So, we put together a big presentation: who’s the fan base, what numbers are we looking at, what are numbers in comparison to other hit films for streamers. We felt like if we could make the case that these numbers would translate into subscribers, it would make sense to do it.
Zack said he wanted to do something for the fans so he and Henry (Cavill) decided to have this watch party and they surprised everyone at the end with the announcement. We hoped it wouldn’t leak beforehand and there was so much excitement.
WAMG: And you both decided to move forward.
DS: I said, now is the time to do this. Because lot of movies are shutting down. A lot of companies had capacity now, companies that maybe wouldn’t have been able to keep their doors open. It was great to be able to support vendors that we and Warner Bros. had worked with for a long time. We had to do everything remotely because of COVID… we couldn’t even be in the same room with our editor.
A lot of the vendors went out of their way to make this happen, because for them also it was completing a journey. Their work got reimagined and so to be able to put it back to what we originally planned… it was as fulfilling for them as it was for us. The whole process really pushed the boundaries and it will change the future of our whole industry.
WAMG: The movie is four hours… What additional scenes did you shoot and how did Tom Holkenborg compose a new score?
DS: The only new scene is the Batman/Joker scene. The rest of it was the original movie. When we took the costumes out the latex started falling apart as it had been so many years in-between. By the last take, we had the cowl taped to the back of Ben’s head so there were many challenges.
The score from Tom was mostly all new and recording the orchestra was all done separately. We would watch them via a video stream while the pieces were coming together.
WAMG: Is this finally the story you set out to tell?
DS: Justice League is a story of a group of misfits. They’re superheroes but they’re all kind of wayward, and each of them has a certain skill sets needed to save the world. It’s the story of the coming together of those lost souls into a family. They form a relationship and become partners so that they can do good, save the world, what have you. But in it, they’re able to go through a catharsis with themselves and their own demons — and of be better in the end.
WAMG: Was there a plan for two more films?
DS: We were planning a 2nd and 3rd Justice League movie where we would be also able to complete the arcs we had fully fleshed out. The idea was to meet Cyborg, who was set to be the heart of this movie. At the time we hadn’t come up with a Cyborg standalone, but that was our plan. So, we did the deepest dive of the movie into Cyborg’s backstory and what makes him tick.
WAMG: The Joker/Batman scene must have required a lot of work, especially trying to pull it off during a pandemic. Was this a completely new idea?
DS: When Zack realized there would be no more Zack Snyder DC movies, his biggest regret was that there was no Batman/Joker confrontation scene. It’s the key relationship for both of them. They both went through a series of films and never ran into each other. It didn’t make sense to him and Zack wanted to fix that. The idea was that we would do it without telling anybody. He talked to Jared and said we’d get him and Ben and shoot it in our backyard…just sneak it into the movie. Then he just wrote the scene and it turned out we could shoot it.
WAMG: How did you get Ezra Miller in it?
DS: He was shooting Fantastic Beasts in the UK and couldn’t make it back, but we were determined to make it work. We wanted one brand new thing. All of this was very complicated, but we figured it out. Graciously Ezra’s film crew agreed to shoot it, and Zack directed on Zoom. The unions and studios did a great job of coming up with parameters of how to shoot during COVID. We really had a guidebook – we followed them which kept everyone safe.
When they reference Robin and Harley Quinn… how did you both picture this scene?
DS: The main notion is that Joker killed Robin. The revelation of the scene is that Harley is dead, and Batman was there in that moment. As well as that somehow Joker has to help Batman fix the world. Which is all part of this post-apocalyptic nightmare reality we were gunning toward in the second and third movies.
WAMG: Martian Manhunter also has a pivotal scene with Batman and anchors an enhanced Lois Lane storyline. How did you both decide to bring him into the film?
DS: Traditionally, in genre, the coda takes you to the next film or into the next universe. Also, it just ties up what’s happened in the movie in a way. Zack’s always been a fan of Martian Manhunter.
I don’t know what his reluctance to engage in humanity is about, but he has all these incredible powers. For years, Zack had been thinking about having Swanwick’s alter ego be Martian Manhunter.
So, we thought: Let’s have Martian Manhunter take on the shape of Martha Kent to get Lois to reengage with the world. And at the end, we’ll bring him back to launch a dark side war. It’s a way to talk about what Bruce Wayne’s role really was. Also, if the Darkseid comes, you’re going to need all hands on deck to face that.
WAMG: Has your vision changed at all between when you were going to make it and when you were finally able to?
DS: I think it’s very close. I’m sure there have been some emotional shifts that have gone on that have put a different prism for the light to shine through. It’s the same story, but there’s more water under the bridge. Working with HBO Max was the best possible situation, because we really took a deep dive into the characters in a way you couldn’t do in a theatrical version of it. There are hard core fans that are going to sit through the movie and people who will sit through a little at a time. It was important to us to make sure that people have options in how they want to view it, especially the Grey Version.
WAMG: There are some elements that you’re glad you got to put into this cut? The battle scenes are epic.
We expanded on the battle scenes because it gives the audience an understanding of the motherboxes and you see that at one time all these forces (The gods, the Atlanteans, the Amazonians) came together but later they became enemies and stopped talking to each other so it’s our story of how these superheroes came together to fight a common enemy. The threat from Darkseid is a credible threat.
I also loved seeing a little bit of a day in the life of Barry Allen. I love the sequence where Flash runs time back, it’s super psychedelic. I think the movie is pretty psychedelic overall. Even just all the stuff with Cyborg inside his mindscape.
I like seeing Bruce starting to turn toward a less dark, calculated character, one that’s inspired by faith that the world will turn correctly as opposed to a character who believes the world will always turn toward the dark. That’s a big move for Bruce in the movie.
WAMG: In this film, in this universe, which character do you identify with most?
DS: It would have to be Wonder Woman. Gal Gadot embodies all the characteristics and amazing qualities. I wasn’t big into comics, but to bring her to the screen and be a producer on WONDER WOMAN was so exciting for me. She is such an amazing character to look up to and in this movie her character has so many different dimensions. When we see women in comic book movies, or action movies, they’re very one-dimensional and in our version she is super strong, has a feminist origin, while being a warrior who is also kind and vulnerable and a women we can be all those things.
When we put her In BATMAN VS SUPERMAN, the accomplishment of being the first filmmakers to bring her to the screen is something I am immensely proud of and my daughter and my son will never know that there isn’t this strong woman out there because she is in their world. There will never be a time in movies where there isn’t a female superhero. Whether it’s DC or Marvel, it’s part of our culture now.
WAMG: What’s the most fun moment you remember having on set?
DS: I had my kids on set one day and they didn’t know the actors, but they knew I was working with Flash and Wonder Woman and Batman, and it’s important because we need heroes today that we look up to. They’re more relatable as they go on this journey and their struggles as they find their place in the world. And we had someone bring their little girl on set and she wanted to see Wonder Woman and she had a note for her, so these moments I remember most and the impact they have on people’s lives.
We ended the interview, the last of the day, with a round of the Top Fun Things About Deborah Snyder
WAMG: What superhero would you dress up as for Halloween?
DS: Princess Leia as we are big STAR WARS fans.
WAMG: What movie would you have wanted to be a producer on?
DS: THE ENGLISH PATIENT. These epic movies aren’t being made anymore.
WAMG: What’s your Favorite Movie Junk Food?
DS: Swedish Fish. I love Swedish Fish!! My kids are always after me to share (laughs)
WAMG: and this one is an either or… sweet or salty?
DS: Salty
WAMG: Dogs or cats?
DS: Dogs, definitely
WAMG: Stronger superhero or smarter superhero?
DS: hmmm, both but probably smarter.
WAMG: Can fans hope for a sequel?
DS: (pauses and inhales) I don’t think so. I think for us being here, it’s been an amazing journey.
Without the fans and their big push, we wouldn’t be here and we put a lot of love and care into the film. I keep pinching myself, it doesn’t feel real. I think when the world sees it, it will finally feel real. We have been working on it in isolation for so long, and it’s been this incredible journey. To be able to finally bring Zack’s vision to the world is just amazing.
The ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE screenplay is by Chris Terrio, story by Chris Terrio & Zack Snyder and Will Beall, based on characters from DC, Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
The film’s producers are Deborah Snyder, p.g.a., Charles Roven, p.g.a., with executive producers Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Wesley Coller, Jim Rowe, Curtis Kanemoto, Chris Terrio and Ben Affleck.
The behind-the-scenes team includes director of photography Fabian Wagner (“Game of Thrones”); production designer Patrick Tatopoulos (“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”); editor David Brenner (“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”); Oscar®-nominated editor Richard Pearson (“Kong: Skull Island,” “United 93”); Oscar®-winning editor Martin Walsh (“Wonder Woman,” “Chicago”); Oscar®-nominated costume designer Michael Wilkinson (“American Hustle”); and visual effects supervisor John “DJ” DesJardin (“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”). The music is by Tom Holkenborg.
ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE has been rated R for violence and some language.
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