Snyder hasn't seen Gunn's Superman. The reason is his alone

Zack Snyder didn’t watch James Gunn’s Superman. Neither Supergirl nor Lanterns. And his explanation doesn’t contain a drop of venom.

The conversation was on Happy Sad Confused, journalist Josh Horowitz’s podcast, recorded at the Toronto Film Festival and published on September 17, 2026. Josh recalled that the director had already touched on the subject days before, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, and asked him to clarify it once and for all.

First, the context. Snyder built the DC cinema universe starting with Man of Steel, in 2013. He left in the middle of Justice League in 2017. In October 2022, James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios and started everything over from scratch, with another Superman, who debuted in July 2025. In other words: the character he cast, dressed and filmed for years now belongs to someone else.

That’s where the answer comes from. He said it’s a personal issue. That he trusts Gunn’s aesthetics and his reading, that the guy has a very unique way of making films. The problem is not with the screen. It’s in the person who sits in the armchair: for them, it comes with too much baggage.

I want success for them.

Zack Snyder on Happy Sad Confused, 09/17/2026, at 43:50

What he knows about the new DCU arrives in the same way that Whedon’s cut arrived: in a meme, on the X feed. He said this with a laugh.

Notice the size of the gesture. It was the easiest time in the world for a jab, with the microphone open and the entire internet waiting. He chose to cheer in public for whoever got his seat. It’s possible to disagree with a lot of DC Studios’ decisions, and here we disagree with a lot of them. But that’s class.

And for those who understand cinema as something you do all your life, it makes perfect sense. Nobody asks a musician to go watch another band play the album he couldn’t finish.