Ever since Zack Snyder made the announcement that his much-hype cut of “Justice League” was going to be released on HBO Max in 2021, a certain contingent of fandom has seen their years-long battle as the first win in an overall war with studios. Fans are now rallying around folks like David Ayer in hopes that his cut of “Suicide Squad” will be released by HBO Max, as well as any other disputed version of a film that fans feel was interfered with by evil studio bosses. Basically, fans are feeling pretty damn powerful, and they want to continue this win streak. But Tony Goncalves, an HBO Max executive, is here to warn fans that the company isn’t going to listen to every petition that exists.
READ MORE: HBO Max Boss Hints “Wildly Expensive” Snyder Cut Will Cost A Lot More Than $30 Million
Speaking on a recent episode of The Vergecast, Gonclaves talked, at length, about the new streaming platform from WarnerMedia and how it plans to do business and succeed in the oft-discussed Streaming Wars. And as you might expect, this talk eventually turned to the announcement of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” and the impact the decision is having on DC film fandom. Goncalves goes out of his way to say that the decision to release Snyder’s Director’s Cut of “Justice League” is “definitely not a precedent” and fans shouldn’t expect numerous other versions of films being released.
“There’s different types of fandoms… My reference to the fandoms is the fact that we’re in a space where consumers are loud,” said Goncalves. “Consumers guide, and we absolutely have to listen as industry. I had a boss that once said, ‘Industry and consumers aren’t always aligned, but consumers do tend to win.’ It’s a fine balance. And I think when it comes to video, when it comes to entertainment, when it comes to content, consumers have never had more choice, and they’ve never had more of a voice. But that doesn’t mean that we will go and invest our dollars in every single fandom that exists.”
READ MORE: ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Raises Questions About Fandom & The Future Of Film
He continued, “But I think the reference to the Snyder Cut and the ‘Friends’ fandom is the fact that consumers are speaking, and we have to listen. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to go redo every movie ever made. But I think that we definitely have to have our ear to the ground. And I think we do.”
It’ll be curious how HBO Max and other studios react in the future to fan petitions and social media campaigns. As mentioned, we’ve seen emphasis put on “Suicide Squad,” with filmmaker David Ayer throwing his support behind the movement. Then there are the ridiculous “Star Wars” fans that want a cut of “Revenge of the Sith.’ And obviously there will be similar petitions in the future.
But as of now, it seems as if the Snyder Cut is the exception and definitely not the rule.
