To say that filmmaker Zack Snyder has had a difficult relationship with Warner Bros. studio would be an understatement. The filmmaker had to leave filming Justice League midway to deal with a family tragedy, at which point the studio brought in Joss Whedon to radically alter Snyder’s vision for the film. It took three years of intense fan campaigning to finally convince Warner to bring Snyder back to complete his cut of Justice League. While promoting his upcoming Netflix movie Army of the Dead, Snyder took a swipe at Warner by promising there would be no need for a “Snyder Cut” of his new film.
“I didn’t have to fight [Netflix]. There are no other cuts of this movie. You don’t have to see a bastardized version – you get to see the awesome version first.”
Even after Warner greenlit Zack Snyder’s Justice League last year, Snyder still got into arguments with the studio over the direction the Snyder cut should take. The filmmaker has revealed previously that he almost quit the project after Warner refused to let him use Green Lantern John Stewart in the film, but ultimately stayed on for the sake of the fans who had campaigned for so long for Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
It seems Netflix was a lot more accommodating towards Snyder and his vision. Army of the Dead tells the story of a world caught in the throes of a massive Zombie outbreak. In this tortured Hellscape, a group of mercenaries plan to pull off an elaborate heist that could result in a lot of money.
The trailer for Army of the Dead was released recently, and it featured a grim new reality where animals can also be infected by the zombie virus. According to Snyder, the main threat of this new reality, the human zombies, belong to two separate categories, of which one particular group, named “alphas”, are a particular problem based on their speed and strength.
“[We] have two categories of zombies in the movie, alphas and then normal shamblers. [If] you see a zombie movie, normal shamblers, it’s like a normal zombie, they kind of move slowly. And then our alphas, which are an evolved version of zombies and zombies that have taken another step, and they’re much… they’re fast, and we kind of treat them kind of like almost like wolves or like, they’re not… they’re sentient, you know what I mean? They kind of, they fight [in] packs and they kind of have a pack mentality.”
Fans have responded favorably to the trailer for Army of the Dead, and are looking forward to watching a Snyder movie that follows his personal vision to the end, without any executive meddling. Directed and co-written by Zack Snyder, Army of the Dead stars Dave Bautista, Garret Dillahunt, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Raul Castillo, Tig Notaro, Theo Rossi, and Ana de la Reguera. The film will release on Netflix on May 21.