Can Netflix Actually Acquire the Snyderverse?
Is the latest fan campaign something that can come true?
In May 2017, Zack Snyder dropped out of post-production on Justice League to deal with a family tragedy, while Warner Bros. got Joss Whedon to finish the movie, officially with Snyder’s blessing. This was very far from true: the theatrical cut will always have Snyder’s name in the credits because of Directors Guild rules (reshoots have no impact on who gets credited), but by all accounts he’s never even watched it, on the advice of pretty much everyone who has seen that version.
Four years later, owing to the pandemic and the need to boost what was then known as HBO Max, the studio agreed to release the so-called Snyder Cut, aka Zack Snyder’s Justice League (a title he insisted on to emphasize the 2017 version is his in name only), which fans had been clamoring for.
As a result of this, a new hashtag was born: #RestoreTheSnyderverse, which has recently spun off into #SellTheSnyderverseToNetflix. The latter is motivated by Snyder’s current professional relationship with the most famous streaming service in the world, and while he’s happy to work on his own projects, he has also suggested such a scenario would be to his liking, as he’s not ready to work with Warners again anytime soon.
But is it actually feasible to sell the Snyderverse – i.e. the interconnected series of films he started in 2013 with Man of Steel – to Netflix, or to any third party? And in what form? The first thing to consider is, what do the fans actually mean by this? Some want Netflix to make these films – two sequels to Snyder’s version of Justice League - on their lonesome, while others more realistically suggest licensing them from WB (there are also those who think the two notions are pretty much the same).
The first option is pretty much a non-starter, because it would require Netflix to acquire the film rights to the various characters, and those don’t come cheap. Batman alone would probably cost the equivalent of an average superhero movie, making the potential films a very expensive affair (for reference, Amazon spent around 250 million dollars for the television rights to The Lord of the Rings, and characters like Batman and Superman are in the same ballpark).
The second option comes with an additional hurdle, as licensing the films from Warner Bros. would require the latter to make them in the first place. While not as expensive as it would be if Netflix had to acquire the character rights, it would still be a costly endeavor, particularly when it comes to talent compensation: the likes of Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot do not have low asking prices to begin with, and if the movies were to be made for streaming their fees would be even higher to make up for the fact streamers don’t have conventional profit participation deals or residuals (a key issue in the recent SAG-AFTRA strike).
Of course, if Warner Bros. were to make these hypothetical sequels to Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Netflix would not be an option at all, as the studio’s policy is to not spend too much money on direct-to-streaming titles and also not dilute their brands by denying a theatrical release to their big superhero extravaganzas.
As such, Netflix is free to license existing Snyder films, which they do on a regular basis (most of his movies pop up on the service on a rotating basis, depending on individual countries). Continuing the storyline first begun inMan of Steel, on the other hand, is highly unlikely, unless the new films were to be made in animated form, which is a more cost-effective option.
Predictably, some of the more, shall we say, passionate members of the fandom have reacted negatively to that idea, with some even resorting to the tired “animation is for children” cliché (incidentally, not the best argument when trying to assert the maturity of your taste in film). And so, for the foreseeable future at least, this will continue to be a neverending story on social media, with no reboot in sight.