HBO Max Boss on Justice League Snyder Cut Costs: ‘I Wish It Was $30 Million’

It appears as if the Snyder Cut of Justice League is costing even more than previously reported, if Bob Greenblatt is being accurate. The HBO Max head appeared on the Recode Media podcast on Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s launch of the streaming service and touched on HBO Max’s plans to release the long-discussed Zack Snyder cut of the film next year.

Greenblatt noted that the cut currently “does not exist,” adding (per Decider), “Zack is actually building it. It’s complex, including … new effects shots, and you know, it’s a radical rethinking of that movie. It’s complicated and wildly expensive, which is of course a number I won’t quote.”

When the reports that it will cost between $20 million and $30 million were mentioned by host Peter Kafka, Greenblatt said, “Yeah, I’ll just say I wish it was just $30 million. I’ll stop there, but it’s an enormous undertaking and very complex … There’s lots of complexity that the fan doesn’t know about, and we weren’t just sitting around going, ‘Let’s not talk to those fans for as long as we can. Let’s drive them crazy.’ We were actually spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to do this and there’s many, many hurdles to jump over.”

He added that they were not trying to keep it a secret, noting that discussions began last fall and Warner Media only made the announcement once they were sure it could be done.“Once we saw that we could do it all and figured out the right economics, which was literally within the last week, we said, ‘All right, let’s get this news out there,” he said. “We were trying very hard to announce it before the launch because we knew it would be very well-received.”

The film will release in 2021, though the form it will take is yet to be determined.