Gaming Club

Warner Bros.

Zack Snyder used bots and threatened Warner Bros. to get his Snyder Cut, according to Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone and Warner Bros. share a study that points to Zack Snyder's use of fake accounts to boost his media campaign.

Director Zack Snyder (300, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman) would have used bots and fake accounts and would have incurred in threats to different Warner Bros. executives in order to get his coveted Zack Snyder's Justice League, aka Snyder Cut. This was revealed by a study conducted by a major media outlet such as Rolling Stone together with Warner Bros. itself, pointing out that a significant part of the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut and #RestoreTheSnyderVerse campaigns were driven by fake accounts.

Justice League and the Snyder Cut

After the failed theatrical release of Joss Whedon's Justice League, a movement began to emerge on social media calling for Zack Snyder's cut. For more than two years, numerous accounts pushed hashtags supporting the so-called Snyder Cut, with the director himself being part of the movement and sharing footage of what he had in store. After such an intense media campaign, Warner Bros finally greenlit the project, premiering it in spring 2021 on HBO Max.

Now, and after more than a year since the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, a detailed report has been published that claims that up to 13% of the accounts that actively participated in the movement were fake, well above the 5% of bots that are usually detected in viral social media movements.

Calls to boycott Warner Bros. releases, cyber-bullying of company executives and even threats from Zack Snyder himself to a Warner Bros. executive to remove the names of Geoff Johns and Jon Berg from his film: "Now, I will destroy them on social media.”

In addition, special emphasis is placed on the personalized harassment and defamation of Ann Sarnoff, president of Warner Bros. from 2019 until last spring, when she stepped down following WarnerMedia's merger with Discovery, all for asserting that "there was no Snyder Cut," which drew the ire of fans on social media.

All in all, it seems that Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder's positions seem further apart than ever and that the so-called SnyderVerse will most likely never be continued.

Source | Rolling Stone