If you count Justice League as one incredibly long, difficult, messy and troubled production that began when Zack Snyder first called action way back in April 2016 and ends on the day that the latest version of the film arrives on HBO Max, then the blockbuster will easily go down as one of the most expensive projects in cinematic history.
At the moment, the record belongs to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which cost Disney a whopping $379 million, but at least it pulled in over $1 billion at the box office. Meanwhile, Justice League‘s first batch of extensive reshoots brought the price tag up to $300 million, and it’s been rumored that the Snyder Cut will add at least another $70 million onto that number.
Throw in some marketing costs for the theatrical release, plus what’ll no doubt be a big push ahead of the new version’s debut on HBO Max, and the project will easily end up coming in around $500 million, if not more. So, it makes sense that WB wants to recoup as much of their money as they can and to do so, they might be sending the pic to cinemas.
That’s according to Snyder himself, who spoke to Entertainment Weekly recently and offered up some new info. First of all, he revealed that his cut will indeed be more mature than the one we previously saw, and he suspects it’ll be rated R.
“Here’s one piece of information nobody knows: The movie is insane and so epic and is probably rated R — that’s one thing I think will happen, that it will be an R-rated version, for sure. We haven’t heard from the MPAA, but that’s my gut.”
“There’s one scene where Batman drops an F-bomb. Cyborg is not too happy with what’s going on with his life before he meets the Justice League, and he tends to speak his mind. And Steppenwolf is pretty much just hacking people in half. So [the rating would be due to] violence and profanity, probably both.”
Furthermore, the director also teased that he’s been discussing a theatrical release with the studio, saying:
“I’m a huge fan and a big supporter of the cinematic experience, and we’re already talking about Justice League playing theatrically at the same time it’s coming to HBO Max. So weirdly, it’s the reverse [of the trend].”
Clearly, this is great news – both the potential rating and the fact that it could be hitting cinemas. Put it together with everything else we’ve been hearing about Snyder’s Justice League, and it’s really starting to look like it’ll be able to live up to the ridiculous amounts of hype being placed upon it. But we won’t know for sure if that’s the case until early next year.