The DC movie universe that Zack Snyder envisioned will never come to pass. Snyder got it started and planted seeds in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, but he never got to finish it. Warner Bros. brought him back for Justice League, but the studio altered the plan.
What was supposed to be multiple Justice League films became just one. Snyder was unable to finish that film after tragically losing his daughter to suicide and Warner Bros. handed it to Joss Whedon. Changes had already been happening, but new, much more drastic alterations started taking place.
We will never get to see Snyder's complete vision, but Kevin Smith has been told the original plan by sources who worked on Justice League throughout its rocky evolution. Smith shared the outline on a new episode of Fatman Beyond (34:29 - video contains language that is NSFW).
“I met people who worked on both versions of Justice League,” Smith said. “They called it Justice League when [Zack] Snyder was doing it. When Joss Whedon came in to take over, they called it Josstice League.”
Smith then explained how Jim Lee broke down boards for three movies. The first movie was “kinda what we saw,” according to Smith, with the Justice League fighting Steppenwolf. A boom tube would have opened up at the end, revealing Darkseid.
The second film would have gone cosmic with the Justice League heading to Apokolips to battle Darkseid. The Green Lantern Corps would have also been involved.
The cut scene from the Justice League trailer with Alfred hoping someone offscreen had not arrived too late was supposedly a Green Lantern. A source who worked on the set that day told Smith they were projecting green lights on actor Jeremy Irons because he was supposed to be talking to a Green Lantern.
The second movie was going to end poorly for the JL, similar to The Empire Strikes Back or Avengers: Infinity War. Darkseid would have beaten the heroes and headed for Earth, setting up the third film by bringing Batman’s nightmare from Batman v Superman to fruition.
The third film would have picked up from there with the heroes taking one final stand against Darkseid. “I really feel like, hearing what I heard, we might have missed something," Smith said. "We might have missed something big.”
It will be interesting to see if Zack Snyder offers any confirmation or denial of what Smith has outlined. Warner Bros. originally announced two Justice League films, but never three. There could have been a plan in place, however, for an unannounced third film.
Snyder has shared his own outline in the form of an image that fans have been deciphering for a couple of weeks. That may be all we get now that the filmmaker is moving on to a new project at Netflix.
