Ever since director Zack Snyder left production of 2017’s Justice League, rumors have swirled (stoked by Snyder)  about the existence of a “Snyder Cut.” What ended up being released by Warner Bros. was mostly a disaster on screen. The Justice League we got was cobbled together by Joss Whedon and felt all over the place at best.

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Jason Momoa on a rant, “Release the fucking Snyder Cut!”

Watch it here.

“No protectors here. No Lanterns. No Kryptonians. This word will fall.” Steppenwolf in cut line.

Above: Uxas (Darkseid) clearing the defenders of earth from the anti-life equation he better lookout for David Thewlis.Via Zack Snyder on Vero

According to The Hollywood Reporter: “In the time since its release, something unusual happened: A growing movement of fans, rallied by the hashtag #ReleasetheSnyderCut, had called, agitated, petitioned — even bought a Times Square billboard and chartered a plane to fly a banner over Comic-Con — for Snyder’s version to be released. And on the film’s second anniversary, the hashtag had its biggest day ever — with even the movie’s stars Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck adding their voices on Twitter. So here, the morning after, was their agent saying that Toby Emmerich, chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures, was acknowledging the movement, and more importantly, was willing to accede. “This is real. People out there want it. Would you guys ever consider doing something?” was what Emmerich was asking, Zack Snyder recalls. The answer to Emmerich’s question, a whispered-about secret for months, was revealed Wednesday when Snyder confirmed, at the end of an online screening of his 2013 movie, Man of Steel, that his version of Justice League was indeed real. And that it will be coming to HBO Max, the WarnerMedia digital streaming service launching May 27, and is expected to debut in 2021.”

On Twitter,Ben Affleck (who played Batman) shared a poster of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and simply said, “2021.” The actor also provided the popular hashtag used by Snyder Cut followers, #ReleaseTheSnyderCut.

2021. @ZackSnyder. @HBOMax. #ReleaseTheSnyderCut pic.twitter.com/SxAhzazIRb

— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) May 21, 2020

Vulture says: “Something dangerous has been let loose in the world. …the dangerous thing at work here is a multibillion-dollar corporation’s concession to its worst online critics. Under Snyder’s guidance, the DC movie universe (unofficially known, thanks to a 2015 joke by an Entertainment Weekly writer, as the DC Extended Universe) was initially envisioned as a tonal counterweight to the far-more-successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, one that would be weighty, philosophical, and dark — or at least dimly lit. The Snyder-helmed films that launched the effort were critically derided, both on aesthetic grounds (overabundant slo-mo, barely visible set pieces, even-less-comprehensible plots) and thematic ones (Superman, an 80-year-old beacon of humanity’s better angels, is portrayed as kind of a dick). Although the DC movie enterprise was probably doomed from the start — a flagrant attempt at making movies in service of building a commercially viable franchise — and although the general public had already received Man of Steel and Batman v Superman with shrugs, Snyder Cut partisans became convinced that their preferred auteur’s removal from Justice Leagueis where the endeavor went wrong. The finished movie didn’t do justice to Superman’s terrifying grandeur, they say; it hewed too closely to the Marvel/Disney model of superhero movie-making and was thus filled with comedy bits so bad that they’re “an indictment on where we are as a society,” as it’s put on a Change.org petition for the Snyder Cut that drew an alleged 179,260 signatories.”

Time magazine does a thorough breakdown of “What is the Snyder cut of Justice League?” here.

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Unclear is the cost of the endeavor. One source has pegged the effort in the $20 million range, although another source says that figure could be closer to $30 million. The parties involved had no comment.

“It will be an entirely new thing, and, especially talking to those who have seen the released movie, a new experience apart from that movie,” Snyder tells The Hollywood Reporter, noting that, to this day, he has not watched the version released in theaters.

“You probably saw one-fourth of what I did,” the director notes, basing his judgment on what has been shared with him of Whedon’s version.

To get a glimpse of what it might be like check out the SDCC Sneak Peak from 2017 below. It is substantially different from later trailers. “No protectors here. No Lanterns. No Kryptonians. This word will fall.” is a line by Steppenwolf to Darkseid that never made the Whedon cut.