There was some upheaval in 2017 when Zack Snyder announced he was leaving the production of Justice League, allowing Joss Whedon to step in. At the time, it was mentioned that Snyder and his wife were stepping away from DC to take some time after the death of their daughter, Autumn. This weekend, however, a journalist who has worked for Mashable and other outlets has indicated he has information that Zack Snyder was actually fired from the role. Per Josh L. Dickey:
Since I'm shifting into DGAF mode, here's a hot one for ya: Zack Snyder was fired from the DCEU just over 1 year ago. Couldn't write it ~quite~ that way at the time, but was able to tapdance around it...
Sticking out amidst a slew of other "DGAF" posts on Twitter, Josh L. Dickey says he had a scoop that Zack Snyder was actually fired by DC and Warner Bros. when he left Justice League about eight months ago. Although not published in an official news source, the news correlates with earlier reports that mentioned Zack Snyder might not actually have wanted to step down from Justice League, after all. A couple of months ago, news indicated that even early on in the making of Justice League there was some pull between Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder regarding the tone of the movie. The issues might have been manageable, but then Snyder lost his daughter and tried to throw himself into his work. By that time Joss Whedon was more involved and the whole thing was becoming increasingly unworkable, resulting in Snyder's exit.
At the time of Zack Snyder leaving Justice League and in the months after, the word "fired" was never bandied about. In fact, one thing that definitely would not be accurate would be the presumption that Zack Snyder was outright fired from his position within the DC universe. While the upcoming DC movies all have different directors at the helm, Zack Snyder is still signed on as a producer in the DC universe. He'll still be making money off of the projects, even if he is less central to the vision of movies in the DCEU moving forward.
When it comes to Hollywood and decision-making, it's often super complicated. Getting fired and exiting a project can sometimes mean the same thing, and sometimes mean that the studio and the director simply could not get on the same page about a project and instead decided to part ways. If a movie drops a director, there's often a lot of hard work that has already been put it, as also happened with Solo: A Star Wars Story and its original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Dropping a director (or in that case directors) can be very complicated. But all of this information could go a long way to explain why Zack Snyder has said he's been happy to step away and refocus his efforts.
In the case of Justice League, the final project ended up being a mishmash of Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon's ideas all wrapped up into a short, two-hour movie that did not beat box office predictions worldwide. Now, DC seems to be moving in a new direction, with the next movie to hit theaters being the James Wan-directed Aquaman feature. We can see how that goes when Aquaman hits theaters on December 21, 2018. In the meantime, here's what we know about that project.
