While Warner Bros. has said Zack Snyder’s Justice League isn’t the start of a trend, they’ve already shown a willingness to cave-in to fan demands. And ever since, we’ve seen petitions for a new cut of Birds of Prey, and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. Both directors have claimed studio meddling led to a change of their versions into what was seen on the big screen. In the case of Ayer, he has been more vocal in a desire to give his film another shot, and he just got some support from, who else, Zack Snyder.
In a recent interview, Snyder talked about his cut of Justice League which arrives on HBO Max, and possibly theaters, in 2021. The subject of Suicide Squad and an Ayer Cut was brought up, and Snyder said he was all for it and will even get involved in making it happen…
“I haven’t talked to David about it, but I’m sure I will. I know him quite well,” said Snyder. “I’ve just been swamped because of COVID. But it’s on my list of things to talk to him about. Like, I support any filmmaker who needs to get their version of their movie or their vision sort of seen, because I’ve had such generous support. So, I really would hope that other people would get that same thing.”
To be fair, the situations Snyder and Ayer faced aren’t at all the same. A big part of the reason WB gave Snyder $70M for reshoots on a new cut is that he was forced to leave due to personal tragedy, and had to sit back and watch as Joss Whedon turned his movie into a shit show.
Ayer was able to shoot the entirety of Suicide Squad, put out an awesome trailer for it, only to have the studio say they wanted something tonally different and along the lines of Deadpool. So they hired outsiders to chop it up until it fit what they wanted, not what Ayer envisioned.
Honestly, both situations suck but Ayer knew what he was getting into. As much as I personally want to see what he originally had planned, it’s unlikely to happen because that would take WB to admit they were wrong the first time.
