The Snyder Cut

[Morgan]

Actually they are. The moment they announced it, did all that filming, and wasted that money, they were obligated to do it.

Ah, I see you missed the "WarnerBros made the decision to greenlight Batgirl before Discovery entered the picture, and Discovery isn't obligated to hold on to bad decisions from the previous regime" statement. The movie business is actually a movie charity, I suppose.

Anyway, the Old WB didn't feel obligated to continue with New Gods and The Trench and cancelled those at the first opportunity under the guise of cleaning house. Discovery is in a similar position and reportedly trying to clear WarnerMedia's debt, since WB lost money falling out with their more bankable directors (Villeneuve, Nolan, etc.) with day-and-date release streaming and not notifying them. They neither focused on streaming-only with considerations for COVID-19, nor focused on theater exclusives which they apparently valued more, so that's on them, and WBDiscovery has to make the decisions that the previous regime should've done, including cancelling projects that should've never been greenlit because they had a poor foundation for existence.

Now, if genuine Batgirl fans started their own thing to get WBD to release the film, I'd respect it, but those fans don't exist. The ones claiming to be don't actually give a damn about finishing what's started and respecting creative vision. They were too busy concern-trolling about COVID-19 and virtue signaling about what "real/true fans" they were for not "bullying" a multibillion-dollar corporation and "setting a dangerous precedent" with a hashtag. Now they've about-faced like the cowards they are, making death threats about David Zaslav. They're just going to forget about the movie itself in a few months because there's no real passion, just some culture war nonsense to win internet arguments. The same people whining about the cancellation would've been the ones to slag the movie when it actually released and complained that it should never have been made, exactly because of how cheap it looks.

Check out the other list of projects WarnerMedia went and announced just to look busy, aside from The Trench and New Gods: Harley Quinn vs. The Joker, Ben Affleck's Batman, Deathstroke, Deadshot, Gotham City Sirens, Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Twins, Lobo, The Amazons, Black Canary, Booster Gold, Nightwing, Plastic Man, Hourman, Static Shock, The Metal Men, and Zatanna. They were announced on the heels of other movies or mentioned as "entering production" at some point and turned into whatever the film equivalent of vaporware is. The Old WB should've gotten those out the door if they cared or put in a stipulation to protect the projects instead of passing the buck to a new company, but it sounds like they didn't. How weird.

WB has been making bad decisions for the past five/six years and the old heads are still using "journalist" stooges to retroactively devalue the one good decision they happened to make, so... glad they're no longer running things at Discovery and there's going to be a dedicated DC Films head.

---

WB has been in a "Post-Snyder era of the DCEU" for the past 5 years. He was already out before 2017 and every movie from Josstice League onward was getting reviews of "The Best DC movie since the Dark Knight" and "A step in the right direction for DC".

Truly magical how multiple movies get the same exact line and don't have anything to show for it. It's like the company itself and access media were spending all that precious time spinning their wheels because a bunch of disgruntled weirdoes in executive positions held a grudge against one dude for doing the job that they hired him for and were too busy listening to some brain-broken wannabe pundits on Twitter and YouTube assign political motivations for why they didn't like one guy's movies.

What about those "steps in the right direction" though?

Shazam earned $363.6M worldwide
Birds of Prey earned $201.9M worldwide
Wonder Woman 1984 earned $166.3M worldwide
The Suicide Squad earned $167M worldwide
The Batman earned $767.9M worldwide. Probably could've broken 1B in the box office if they shaved off a half hour to fit in more showings.

I'd have put Joker in here since it broke a billion, but "journalists" were too busy going off about how Joker was made for incels and would inspire more mass shootings, practically salivating at the idea that it could happen just so they would be right about having called it. No one said it was a "step in the right direction" for DC, and WB not showing any faith in the production is why they didn't see the full billion-plus in profit and had to split it between other production companies. Haha. Oops.

David Zaslav is at least smart enough for right now not to namedrop Zack Snyder as the boogeyman of the company at fault for any future projects and cancellations. The focus is on DC's trinity plus Aquaman, with event films to motivate the theater goers.

Quote: "We have some great DC films coming up — Black Adam, Shazam, and Flash, and we're working on all of those, We're very excited about them. We've seen them, we think they're terrific, and we think we can make them even better. Our ambition is to bring Warners back and to produce great high-quality films, and as we look at the opportunities that we have broadly, DC is top of the list for us. You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman — these are brands that are known everywhere in the world. The ability to drive those all over the world with great story is a big opportunity for us. [...] There will be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC. It's very similar to the structure that Alan Horn and Bob Iger put together, very effectively, with Kevin Feige at Disney. We think that we could build a long-term much stronger, sustainable growth business out of DC. And as part of that, we're going to focus on quality. We're not going to release any film before it's ready. We're not going to release a film to make a quarter. We're not going to release a film unless the focus is going to be, 'How do we make each of these films in general as good as possible?'"

Whether Discovery can pull it off is a wait-and-see thing. If Snyder comes back eventually as part of the plan, cool. If not, he's working with Netflix right now. He still has work on Rebel Moon and the Armyverse, so I'm not fussed.

 

[BrawlMan]

Ah, I see you missed the "WarnerBros made the decision to greenlight Batgirl before Discovery entered the picture, and Discovery isn't obligated to hold on to bad decisions from the previous regime" statement. The movie business is actually a movie charity, I suppose.

Regardless, they still had an obligation. They can try and justify it however they want. They can still get f@cked.

Anyway, the Old WB didn't feel obligated to continue with New Gods and The Trench and cancelled those at the first opportunity under the guise of cleaning house. Discovery is in a similar position and reportedly trying to clear WarnerMedia's debt, since WB lost money falling out with their more bankable directors (Villeneuve, Nolan, etc.) with day-and-date release streaming and not notifying them. They neither focused on streaming-only with considerations for COVID-19, nor focused on theater exclusives which they apparently valued more, so that's on them, and WBDiscovery has to make the decisions that the previous regime should've done, including cancelling projects that should've never been greenlit because they had a poor foundation for existence.

Didn't know about those, but my feelings would be the same for those that cared, like I did for Batgirl.

Now, if genuine Batgirl fans started their own thing to get WBD to release the film, I'd respect it, but those fans don't exist. The ones claiming to be don't actually give a damn about finishing what's started and respecting creative vision. They were too busy concern-trolling about COVID-19 and virtue signaling about what "real/true fans" they were for not "bullying" a multibillion-dollar corporation and "setting a dangerous precedent" with a hashtag. Now they've about-faced like the cowards they are, making death threats about David Zaslav. They're just going to forget about the movie itself in a few months because there's no real passion, just some culture war nonsense to win internet arguments. The same people whining about the cancellation would've been the ones to slag the movie when it actually released and complained that it should never have been made, exactly because of how cheap it looks.

Those dumb asses mean nothing to me. I don't give a sh#t about them. There are actual fans that care about Batgirl/Barba Gordon would have more than wanted a proper or decent adaption.

Check out the other list of projects WarnerMedia went and announced just to look busy, aside from The Trench and New Gods: Harley Quinn vs. The Joker, Ben Affleck's Batman, Deathstroke, Deadshot, Gotham City Sirens, Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Twins, Lobo, The Amazons, Black Canary, Booster Gold, Nightwing, Plastic Man, Hourman, Static Shock, The Metal Men, and Zatanna. They were announced on the heels of other movies or mentioned as "entering production" at some point and turned into whatever the film equivalent of vaporware is. The Old WB should've gotten those out the door if they cared or put in a stipulation to protect the projects instead of passing the buck to a new company, but it sounds like they didn't. How weird.

I did not know about them, nor did I go out of my way to look, let alone bother to keep up. Like I said before, I don't go constantly looking for announcement, nor am I expected to remember every single one. I see your point and all though.

WB has been in a "Post-Snyder era of the DCEU" for the past 5 years. He was already out before 2017 and every movie from Josstice League onward was getting reviews of "The Best DC movie since the Dark Knight" and "A step in the right direction for DC".

I never bothered with mainstream sites for a reason. I watched and came to my own conclusion on whether these films were good or not. A majority of them I either consider good or great. I don't even hate SS1 despite its production troubles. The movie is basically a C. C+ with the extended cut. I sure as hell don't need their dumb asses and gossiping opinions to figure out for myself.

 

[berto]

Has this really become such a big deal? Before getting canceled I've literally heard no one mention any exactment for Batgirl and now that it has it has become the fundamental film that everyone will battle for or against. From borderline obscurity to the hill people will die on. God, forbidden fruit, man.

 

[BrawlMan]

Has this really become such a big deal?

Yes. The top guy at WBD is cancelling all projects that involve people of color and women. He fired the highest paying executive at WB, who is a woman, and replaced her with 6 guys who are all straight white men. It's in the video and in the news. If this is how WBD is going to be, then I no longer want anything to do with them. After Aquaman 2 and Black Adam, this might be my last ride. I sure as f#ck am not seeing the Flash movie, nor that pathetic Joker sequel that is a musical. **** that twice as hard.

Before getting canceled I've literally heard no one mention any exactment for Batgirl and now that it has it has become the fundamental film that everyone will battle for or against.

So? Just because you didn't hear about it, or look around hard enough, does not mean people weren't talking about it. Before the cancellation, there was an announcement, and some behind-the-scenes production photos. The people who were excited about Batgirl were expecting a trailer some time around later summer or early fall. There was not much to talk about that the time, because the announcement happened earlier in Spring. Obviously there would have been more talk had the movie not gotten cancelled, and a trailer came through.

 

[berto]

Just because you didn't hear about it, or look around hard enough, does not mean people weren't talking about it.

Yeah, and I didn't go looking for it this time, either. That's how I know. Before, I saw all but a few items confirming the production. Maybe something every few months. Now, it's all over and I can't seem to go anywhere without seeing it to some degree. There is a substantial difference.

 

[BrawlMan]

Yeah, and I didn't go looking for it this time, either. That's how I know. Before, I saw all but a few items confirming the production. Maybe something every few months. Now, it's all over and I can't seem to go anywhere without seeing it to some degree. There is a substantial difference.

When a company is applying scorched Earth tactics to its IPs with leading people being either people of color or women, it shines a big spotlight on their racism and sexism. Stating and implying only straight white men only care about superhero or fantasy stories show how bullsh#t and backwards thinking the new guys in charge are. Say what you will about the Netflix, Disney, and even Amazon Prime (and there is a lot to unpack for each one), but they at least more than happy to appeal to people of different races, nor mind them in lead roles. Before the buy out merger, WB was actually improving with their DCEU and other super hero related franchises. Now they're shooting their feet with a rocket launcher. Like I said before, if this is how everything is going to be, then I want nothing to do with them anymore.

 

[Morgan]

Has this really become such a big deal? Before getting canceled I've literally heard no one mention any exactment for Batgirl and now that it has it has become the fundamental film that everyone will battle for or against. From borderline obscurity to the hill people will die on. God, forbidden fruit, man.

Logically speaking, it shouldn't be a big deal. Projects get cancelled, canned, trashed, what have you, all the time, and for much less reasons than whatever we heard about Batgirl being "irredeemable".

The furor about Batgirl devolved into typical culture war nonsense, though, and that's why you're hearing about it. The "in favor" camp argues it was cancelled because Zaslav is a racist right-winger, and the movie deserves to exist because they already spent money on it (sunk cost fallacy) and also Batgirl is Latina and there's a trans side character in it, so, "representation". Also Michael Keaton is there. And something something Brendan Fraser making a "comeback".

Spoiler: As an Aside

I'm putting that in quotation marks because he was already in TV roles like The Affair and Scrubs, then Doom Patrol and No Sudden Moves, and everyone seems to forget that the decline of Fraser's career was a compounding of issues: he suffered multiple injuries and hospitalizations filming movies like The Mummy (namely a back injury that made it hard to work out and contributed to his weight gain), and on top of that he was sexually assaulted by a male Hollywood executive and spoke out, and that's what got him blacklisted from the industry. As part of the ongoing culture war nonsense, people ignored those parts of his story and blamed every problem he ever had with his career solely on his ex-wife divorcing him. Cue "activists" using his teary-eyed face for countless video thumbnails just to argue solely about alimony, ignoring that his mother died just days prior to the interview where he was crying. Man was going through some sh#t and was a very private person. But it mattered more to people to whine about how women ask too much on divorce, not that Hollywood is a rampant hive of sex pests and they can simply "investigate themselves and find no wrongdoing", or that studios don't do enough to protect their assets (the actors) and are liable to get them killed or maimed just for entertainment, because they can get new actors to endanger themselves for a movie role.

Those "against" are embittered Snyder fans going, "Oh, so NOW you care?" and pointing out how the Snyder Cut campaign was treated for years + pulling up receipts on specific Batgirl movie "advocates" being hypocritical or outright racist + talking about how the Snyder fandom was being maligned for years and called a cult or bots, and that they're not going to behave as the Batgirl movie's personal army to get the film released now that it's convenient for DC fans. Somewhere in there are also people arguing that the movie was going to be "woke trash". Absolutely no one has seen shred of the script or any marketing to even know what the movie was going to be outside of alleged leaks that say Keaton wasn't playing much of a role anyway and only appeared in five scenes total throughout the movie. But that costume looked cheap as f#ck. It looks like a slightly higher budget CW fare.

Regardless, everyone working on the film got paid. They didn't do all that for free. Shareholders just aren't seeing a return on the investment and we have one less movie consigned to a TV screen.

I have already said what I've said. It's still sketchy that the old WB put this out in the first place because they only did it to salvage their reputation over how they treated Ray Fisher et. al. The fact that Batgirl was slated to be an *HBO Exclusive* along with Blue Beetle and Static Shock, with a low budget that would make the movies look cheap (Patty Jenkins already pointed this out after WW84), should raise eyebrows. It's alarmingly clear that the old WB didn't believe in these properties, because they weren't being given the care that would've been afforded to Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. Does it make sense to rope in Latino fans with "Batgirl" and "Supergirl" when each of them somehow are getting less budget than *Black Widow?* That's patronizing. BW was a dogwater movie. Imagine treating Batgirl and Supergirl worse than that from the jump and expecting credit. Therefore WBD was right to scrap it. The properties can be revisited with a better budget and a script and good costuming that that budget can afford.

 

[Foxtrot94]

 

[BrawlMan]

Assholes...

BATGIRL Director Tried To Retrieve Footage From Canceled Movie Only To Find Warner Bros. Had Deleted It

Batgirl director Bilall Fallah has revealed that he went to try and retrieve some footage from the cancelled DC Comics movie, only to find that Warner Bros. had already removed all traces of it...

comicbookmovie.com

Karma is a biatch.

Warner Bros. Discovery Has Lost $20 Billion In Value

Warner Bros Discovery wants to cut costs, but apparently doing so has made the company drop like a freaking stone.

www.giantfreakinrobot.com

 

[Morgan]

There's an Untitled Event Film slated for release in February, which suggests it's a film that's already completed as opposed to a brand new property. Place bets:
Suicide Squad, the Ayer Cut
or
Zack Snyder's Justice League, theatrical release on IMAX with the Green Lantern post-credits scene



Also,

DC’s Kevin Feige Found? Producer Dan Lin in Talks to Take Control of Film, TV for Superhero Arm​

 

[Lain]

Assholes...

I agree, it is pretty outrageous that Bilall Fallah thinks he can just steal company property like that. I suspect he's hurt his future with other companies pulling a stunt like that.

 

[BrawlMan]

I agree, it is pretty outrageous that Bilall Fallah thinks he can just steal company property like that. I suspect he's hurt his future with other companies pulling a stunt like that.

I know you meant it as a joke, but the assholes I am referring to are just WB. Not the director that tried to save the footage from his movie.

 

[Morgan]

I agree, it is pretty outrageous that Bilall Fallah thinks he can just steal company property like that. I suspect he's hurt his future with other companies pulling a stunt like that.

How toxic. I expect a full piece from Rolling Stone villainizing him for such a statement and calling him literally Lex Luthor.

Oh well, there's always Rebel.
Huh, wonder why totally-not-toxic-and-perfectly-sane Batgirl fans aren't promoting that movie to support their new favorite directors?

 

[Lain]

I know you meant it as a joke, but the assholes I am referring to are just WB. Not the director that tried to save the footage from his movie.

Well...no. The “joke” is that I knew you were referring to WB the whole time and I was comically misunderstanding you in order to suggest the very opposite - that Fallah is out of line for attempting to make off with company property like that. Like bruh, just let it go and move on. :/

 

[Foxtrot94]

Suicide Squad, the Ayer Cut

I'd be interesting in watching a 4 hour long Ayer """""cut""""". Cram all the Leto scenes in, and the outtakes too while you're at it.

 

[Morgan]

Zack Snyder featured in Teen Titans Go's 365th episode, aptly titled 365!

The full episode was posted on Twitter in parts.

 

[Morgan]

 

[BrawlMan]

Warner Bros. Discovery Inflated HBO Max Subscribers, Lawsuit Claims

An Illinois police pension board brought the suit suggesting "hundreds of thousands" of Discovery shareholders were duped

www.thewrap.com

 

[Morgan]

It's crazy neat what a little bit of reading comprehension and reading past the headline can do. Check this out:

The Wrap: Warner Bros. Cooked HBO Max Subscriber Numbers, Misled Shareholders in Discovery Merger, Lawsuit Claims​

Warner Bros. cooked its HBO Max subscriber numbers by as many as 10 million and misled shareholders in other ways that violate the Securities Act to complete its merger with Discovery, according to a class-action lawsuit that claims it could potentially represent “hundreds of thousands” of plaintiffs.

The lawsuit was filed last Friday in New York on behalf of the Collinsville Police Pension Board, an Illinois-based shareholder of Warner Bros. Discovery stock, which it accepted in trade for its pre-merger Class C common Discovery shares. At the time of the merger, Discovery shares were valued at $24.78; as of Tuesday, WBD shares were trading just above $11.

The lawsuit names Warner Bros. Discovery, CEO David Zaslav, and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels as defendants. WBD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit says that, among several other “adverse information” being kept hidden, the merging companies overstated the subscriber base for HBO Max:

“WarnerMedia was improvidently concentrating its investments in streaming and ignoring its other business lines … [and] overstated the number of subscribers to HBO Max by as many as 10 million subscribers, by including as subscribers AT&T customers who had received bundled access to HBO Max, but had not signed onto the service.”

More than 700 million shares of WBD were issued to Discovery common and preferred shareholders pursuant to the merger, the lawsuit states, meaning “hundreds of thousands” of people could potentially join the federal securities class-action filed in a New York federal district court.

Discovery and the WarnerMedia division of AT&T announced their merger plans in May 2021, and closed this year on April 8.

The lawsuit says “the Registration Statement and Prospectus and certain of the Defendants’ other public statements, contained untrue statements of material fact or omitted to state material facts required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not misleading.”

It also said “AT&T was overinvesting in WarnerMedia entertainment content for streaming, without sufficient concern for return on investments … WarnerMedia had a business model to grow the number of subscribers to its streaming service without regard to cost or profitability.”

The plaintiff, a pension fund to benefit current and former police officers in Collinsville, Illinois, suggests that anyone who purchased WBD on the open market post-merger is qualified to join the lawsuit.

It’s seeking a jury trial for monetary damages, alleging three separate Securities and Exchange Commission violations.

As usual, the pre-amended headline was wrong to begin with and doesn't tell the whole story. WarnerMedia, as in, the Warner Bros that existed pre-merger, cooked the numbers up to inflate its value to Discovery. David Zaslav was the CEO of Discovery, Inc, and is now CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, but had no position in WarnerMedia before that, which means he was also defrauded by the likes of Jason Kilar (CEO of WarnerMedia), Toby Emmerich (Chairman of Warner Bros Picture Group), and Ann Sarnoff (CEO of Warner Bros).

Dang, doesn't that track with something that was already reported weeks ago?

The Hollywood Reporter: Warner Bros. Discovery CFO: ‘Batgirl’ Shutdown Coverage Was “Blown Out of Proportion” to Its Business Impact​

"I am glad to see a more rational approach to content spend," Gunnar Wiedenfels said at a conference, while noting that the company is committed to spending more than ever on TV shows and films.

BY ALEX WEPRIN

Warner Bros. Discovery’s surprise shelving of Batgirl was “blown out of proportion a little bit,” according to company CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels.
The executive, speaking at a Bank of America conference Thursday, said that while the company has made tough choices with regard to its content investment and strategy, the focus on what was supposed to be an HBO Max original film was pushed too far by media coverage, with Warners remaining committed to growing its content business.

“Clearly the course corrections, making changes quickly where we don’t agree with the track that WarnerMedia was on, that took a lot of courage and execution early,” Wiedenfels said, adding of Batgirl specifically: “I don’t think it is unusual. We are a creative industry, and one of the elements of creativity is that there is judgment and views on what the potential of what a certain piece of IP might be.”

Wiedenfels said that the company’s creative leaders like film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy make the calls on content decisions, but that “my team has helped them by providing financial data points where possible, and a framework to assess the potential from a financial perspective.”
He noted that while a lot of headlines are focusing on content as a source of cost savings, the company expects most of its synergies to be outside of content. WBD took an $825 million write-down on content in its last quarter, which didn’t account for Batgirl.

Going forward, Wiedenfels says that the company is spending more money than it ever has (when considering the combined spend of the two companies), though he added, “I am glad to see a more rational approach to content spend.

“We have made some course corrections, but we are in business to create content and tell fascinating stories, and we will fund that,” he added.
Wiedenfels also said that WBD CEO David Zaslav is still engaged in forging an overarching strategy, but that things are beginning to click.

“The first priority has been to get the team in place, and I think David has now established an almost complete, strong management team,” Wiedenfels said, adding that it took “a lot of courage to make decisions and quickly get the company on the track that we want to see it on.”
But there are also opportunities to be mined from the company’s trove of IP.

“I think there are a couple of clear priorities. DC stands out,” Wiedenfels said, alluding to the search for someone to lead the comic book brand’s empire. “As you know, David is still looking for someone to lead that, specifically. Wizarding World of Harry Potter has huge potential if we can get it right … There is a lot in flight, but clearly if you look at it from a risk and reward perspective, leveraging some of those existing brands improves your return profile.”

And looking further out, Wiedenfels showed signs of optimism and caution.

On the one hand, he said, “I think the opportunity is enormous, I view this as a Boeing 747 flying on one engine,” noting all of the potential options on the table.

But on the other hand, he said that financial data his team accessed after the merger did not align with some of what they had access to pre-merger, forcing an adjustment.

And he also noted that “there is uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, no question about it.”

But I guess the less-than-half-a-dozen people still big baby rage mad over a poorly budgeted movie getting scrapped by the new guys are well within their rights to believe a CEO somehow managed to trick himself into losing money on a merger and that he was an executive on both companies when he wasn't, for some reason, or that the post-merger company time traveled to deceive its own shareholders from prior to April 2022.

Also, that the previous regime greenlighting over a dozen projects left and right, sitting on the Green Lantern IP since they announced a project in 2014, getting into Twitter beef with Ray Fisher, and trying to convince people that they had no metrics to judge whether Zack Snyder's Justice League was a success but that Godzilla vs Kong, Mortal Kombat 2021, Wonder Woman 1984, and The Suicide Squad were somehow all massive successes for day-and-date streaming via undisclosed "metrics" was totally innocent of wrongdoing.

Yup, that's believable.

 

[Morgan]

The Release The Ayer Cut Twitter posted that they've seen the completed cut of David Ayer's Suicide Squad, it's about 2 and a half hours. The plot was executed differently than in the theatrical release. Ayer retweeted and confirmed it.

It's been acknowledged that the Untitled Event Film coming soon (November 2022, or February 2023) is likely a completed cut of a movie that wasn't released that way in theaters, but the chances are getting higher that it's the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad. If it has to be either ZSJL or SS, it's probably SS. If both the November and February dates are true, then both movies getting a theatrical release could be true.

But we'll see.