Phantom Visions of the SnyderVerse: Unproduction and the Fan-Led Battle to Restore Zack Snyder’s DC Extended Universe Films

When Warner Brothers unceremoniously dismissed Zack Snyder from Justice League (2017), fans turned their ire toward the studio. In addition to decrying WB’s callous treatment of their favorite director, Snyder’s followers posited that a shadow version of Justice League existed, which they called The Snyder Cut. Dubbed "Snyder Cut Bronies" in popular media outlets, these fans believed Snyder had secretly filmed his cut while concurrently shooting WB’s version of JL. Snyder himself began supporting these claims by posting concept art, storyboards, unfinished VFX stills, short clips and text descriptions of unused scenes on his Vero page. Fans, too, sought to help fill in unproduced gaps with their own online fanart and speculation about unused characters, all while engaging with Snyder as idolized auteur, repository of teaser material and authenticator of fan theories. WB would eventually acquiesce to growing fan demands, agreeing to fund The Snyder Cut’s postproduction and release it on HBO Max. In evaluating The Cut’s pictorial afterlives supplied by both Snyder and fan artists, I will demonstrate how these online texts helped motivate different kinds of real-world activism among Snyder Cut fans. Fans mobilized to raised money for suicide prevention, used Comic Con as a venue for promoting the Snyder Cut, and barraged WB executives’ social media accounts by reposting "#ReleaseTheSnyderCut."