A few lucky fans got an early glimpse of Zack Snyder’s hotly anticipated cut of Justice League this week. On Monday, HBO Max users who tried to watch the film Tom and Jerry were greeted with the superhero movie instead when the streamer accidentally uploaded the film 10 days ahead of its March 18 release. One viewer, Doug Bass of Charlotte, North Carolina, told The Hollywood Reporter he was able to watch an hour of the four-hour cut before access disappeared. THR reporters were also able to access the cut when they clicked on Tom and Jerry.
“Zack Snyder’s Justice League was temporarily available on HBO Max and the error was addressed within minutes,” the streamer confirmed to the outlet. Screenshots and clip shares of the film began making their way to Twitter before takedown notices were issued, snapping the project back into the HBO Max vault.
Bass, for what it’s worth, loved what he saw: “I just wanted to put on Tom & Jerry for background noise while I worked, and instead I watched an hour of an amazing movie,” he told the outlet.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the titular director’s new cut of his superhero movie, the result of years of hardcore (and frequently toxic) fan rallying. Snyder had been at the helm of the 2017 production until he suffered a family tragedy. The studio then tapped Joss Whedon to finish the film. Whedon, who has since been accused by cast members like Ray Fisher of creating a toxic work environment on the set, did extensive rewrites and reshoots of the film, which debuted to lackluster reviews. Since then, Snyder purists have been calling for the director to restore his vision and make a new cut of the film, which Warner Bros. finally acquiesced to last year, allowing Snyder to do reshoots and reassemble cast members like Gal Gadot, who plays Wonder Woman, and Ben Affleck, who plays Batman.
The new cut cost around $70 million, Snyder told Vanity Fair, though he didn’t take a penny of the budget for himself. “I’m not getting paid,” the director said. Not taking a fee, he continued, helped him get more creative control: “I didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, and it allowed me to keep my negotiating powers with these people pretty strong.” The four-hour cut will debut (once more, with feeling) on HBO Max on March 18.
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