The long road to the Justice League release of the Snyder Cut on HBO Max has been long, but now filmmaker Zack Snyder and the cast can finally point toward their shared labor with the film finally premiering on the new streaming service — but screenwriter Chris Terrio is now opening up about his own experience. The journey toward the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been harrowing for many, and now Terrio has broken his silence about the toll Joss Whedon’s version took on him when it was released in theaters.
After Whedon took over writing and directing duties for Justice League reshoots when Snyder exited the project, Terrio reveals he was devastated. The screenwriter opened up during a recent interview with Vanity Fair.
“I went into such depression when the film was taken away and rewritten. But I didn’t even feel entitled to be depressed, because Zack and Debbie [Snyder, his wife and coproducer] were dealing with their family tragedy,” said Terrio. “Measured against that, losing the film that you wrote seems like nothing at all. But it did hurt. It hurts to think that I cared so much about these characters and worked on nothing else for a very long time.”
Terrio referenced the Snyder family’s own experience and how it affected the entire project. But despite all of the issues they endured through their collaborations on Justice League and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Terrio still has nothing but good things to say about Zack Snyder.
“He has a skill set that I don’t have, as a visualist. And he has a contagious excitement—that when you describe a scene, he almost can’t contain himself and he just wants to go draw it or paint it,” Terrio said. “Zack never for a second turned his back on me or doubted my work.”
Terrio added, “After Batman/Superman, many of my Hollywood friends just stopped talking to me because they sort of thought that somehow I was complicit in this very public failure of a studio film. You learn pretty quickly who your real friends are and who your air-kiss Hollywood friends are. Zack could not have been more supportive and never stopped believing that together, we were going to create this big, epic DC world.”
Fans can see their completed vision with Batman v Superman and Zack Snyder’s Justice League now streaming on HBO Max.