Zack Snyder on his breakup with DC: "We weren’t trying to make an Avengers movie"

Zack Snyder is in the thick of launching an entirely new franchise (Netflix’s Rebel Moon), but he still inevitably has to field questions about his time at DC. His exit from the studio was tumultuous and tragic, as the loss of his daughter to suicide caused him to step back from directing Justice League. However, the trouble between Snyder and Warner Bros. started before that, when they were apparently pushing for a more Marvel-esque tone in the film.

“We cared deeply about what we were doing,” Snyder says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “We weren’t trying to make an Avengers movie. We weren’t. We didn’t know how, quite frankly. They brought someone in that did.” That someone, of course, is The Avengers director Joss Whedon (who later came under fire for his conduct on the Justice League set and elsewhere). “I’ve never seen the [Whedon version], but it wasn’t the answer,” Snyder added.

Snyder’s vision for the film famously saw the light in 2021, after an intense fan campaign to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. “I’m not going to comment on the details of whether they are good or bad, whether they are toxic or bullying,” says Snyder of the fans now. “That’s in every chat room. It’s what comes with the internet. But I do know that the work they did on some level was good. I can say for a fact that they did good. That is undeniable.” (THR notes that fans raised more than $1 million for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in honor of Snyder’s daughter.) He’s also unbothered by reports that online demand for the movie was artificially inflated via the use of bots: “The truth is? It doesn’t matter. The movie got made. If they were smart enough to employ bots in this thing, then they won. That movie has no business existing—and it does.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Snyder has kind words for both Ezra Miller (“[They] did a great job in that Flash movie. It’s very difficult to play against yourself”), Amber Heard (“I just don’t get it. If other people don’t like her, I don’t know what to say. I would work with her in a second”), and even his DC successor and former collaborator James Gunn. After WB hired Gunn, “I called him and said I wish all the best for him,” the director says. “I told him I wanted it to work.”

For himself, he’s over the superhero scene: “We’ve been on the treadmill—it has not evolved. I don’t have the excitement for it that I used to have.” Nevertheless, he’d be open to directing a Dark Knight Returns adaptation if it was “a true representation” of Frank Miller’s graphic novel. And even Marvel could tempt him if they wanted an adaptation of Miller’s Elektra Lives Again. But for now, he seems content creating his own universe over at Netflix.