Report: Zack Snyder was fired from Justice League (update)

New reports say that Zack Snyder was fired from Justice League, months before he publicly shared that he was no longer involved with the project.

Entertainment reporter Josh Dickey is leaving the industry, and tweeted a series of links with some context about his time there. One of his claims was that Snyder didn’t leave the project voluntarily, but was instead fired from the film, according to unnamed sources.

Collider is backing up Dickey’s tweet, reporting that Warner Bros. fired Snyder in January or February 2017 — months before Snyder announced he was stepping away from the project to deal with the personal matters after the death of his daughter.

“I’d heard similar things from separate sources over the last year as well,” Collider’s Matt Goldberg wrote. “I also heard that Snyder’s rough-cut of the movie was ‘unwatchable’ (a word that jumped out at me because it’s rare you hear two separate sources use the exact same adjective). Of course, even if that’s true, there’s obviously more to the story since rough cuts can be fixed up with reshoots, rewrites, etc.”

The sensitive nature of Snyder’s family tragedy played a part in keeping this story from being reported, according to some, but it also seems true that no one was willing to go on the record to confirm or deny whether Snyder left or was fired.

Goldberg and Dickey’s reporting supports other developments that were happening at Warner Bros. at the time; developments that, in hindsight, foreshadowed Snyder’s work on future movies. In May 2016, just a few months after the disastrous release of Batman v Superman, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara removed Silverman as a supervisor overlooking the DC Comics film slate. The Wrap reported that Tsujihara was investing heavily in Warner Bros.’ DC Comics brand, and wanted films with better critical reception.

“It’s no secret the studio wanted better critical reception on the DC properties,” sources told The Wrap.

The Wrap later reported that executives at Warner Bros. first raised major concerns over Snyder’s work in mid-2016, after the release of Batman v Superman. Those same executives pleaded with Silverman, who worked with Snyder on 300, to remove him from Justice League and give the project to someone else. Silverman refused. Less than a year later, in December 2016, Silverman was ousted from the company.

Variety reported that company executives were not happy with the performances of other DCEU films, including Suicide Squad, which Silverman oversaw. It was only a few months after, based on Dickey’s and Goldberg’s reports, that Snyder was also fired from the production.

We’ve reached out to Warner Bros. for comment. The company has spoken on Snyder’s future involvement with the DC films in the past.

“Zack Snyder is not currently scheduled to direct a DC film, but he is serving as a producer or executive producer on upcoming DC pictures such as Wonder Woman 2 and Aquaman,” Warner Bros. told Polygon in a previous statement.

Update: This story has been updated with additional context and details about Snyder’s history with Warner Bros. and the production of Justice League.