Snyder turned down the Marvel formula

To Zack Snyder, a Marvel movie is an amusement park ride. It climbs, it drops, it glides for a second, it drops again, and at the end you step off saying it was amazing. Except he never wanted to build that ride, and now he explained why.

He sat down with Borys Kit, a reporter at The Hollywood Reporter (Hollywood’s business magazine), at his office in Pasadena, California. The piece came out on September 12, the day before The Last Photograph premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The subject was the new film, small and independent, shot in Colombia in 32 days with the camera on his own shoulder. But, as always, the conversation went back to DC.

Here is his reasoning. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are the most famous heroes in the world, apart from Spider-Man. As Snyder sees it, Marvel figured out how to shape its characters to sell, but he was always after something else: what makes these heroes iconic on the inside.

I had no interest in that. And you know, maybe that was a mistake. But I don’t think that way. I can’t do that. I’d rather just kind of talk about the mythology of them.

Zack Snyder to The Hollywood Reporter, interview by Borys Kit published on 09/12/2026

Then he added that maybe that is not as much fun. And laughed.

Now look at the “maybe that was a mistake” part. It is not an apology. It is a guy admitting the market rewards the roller coaster and saying, in the same breath, that he does not know how to work any other way. And audiences went with him. Man of Steel made 670 million dollars worldwide and Batman v Superman made 874 million, according to Box Office Mojo. When Warner rewrote and reshot 2017’s Justice League to make everything lighter, the film made 661 million on a 300 million budget, the lowest box office of the three. And then fans spent more than three years asking for Snyder’s version, until it came out in March 2021.

Worldwide US & Canada Budget

Tap or click a bar to see the details.

1. Man of Steel (2013) $670M $291M $225M $670M
2. Batman v Superman (2016) $874M $330M $250M $874M
3. Justice League (2017), Whedon's version $661M $229M $300M $661M

Image: Warner Bros. / DC via TMDB

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

The biggest of the three: $874.4 million worldwide and their biggest US and Canada opening, $166 million. This is where Ben Affleck's Batman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman first appeared.

Source: Box Office Mojo: Batman v Superman 09/24/2026

Box office from all theatrical releases, in dollars of the time, not adjusted for inflation. Budgets don't include marketing.

Source: Box Office Mojo: Man of Steel 09/24/2026 / Box Office Mojo: Batman v Superman 09/24/2026 / Box Office Mojo: Justice League (2017) 09/24/2026 / The Numbers: Justice League (2017) budget 09/24/2026 / Checked on 09/24/2026

The same interview has a detail that is so him. Snyder went back to the Warner lot to present a screening of Excalibur, one of his favorite films, and took an hour of questions. One of them was about the adversity he has faced in his career. He found it a little odd to hear that in that very room, where he lost the universe he built. And he took it in stride.

For us, that is where the SnyderVerse lives. You forget a roller coaster on your way out of the park. Mythology is what people are still arguing about ten years later.