Featured Image Credit: Bethesda/Marvel
Topics: Justice League, DC, TV And Film
The passionate online campaign that convinced Warner Bros. to allow director Zack Snyder to finish making the mythical "Snyder Cut" of 2017's critically panned Justice League was massively amplified by nots and fake accounts, it has emerged.
This is according to a new report from Rolling Stone, who claim to have seen an investigation commissioned by WarnerMedia detailing the extent of the use of bots in the Snyder Cut campaign.
According to the report, "at least 13 percent of the accounts that took part in the conversation about the Snyder Cut were deemed fake, well above the three to five percent that cyber experts say they typically see on any trending topic."
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While there was clearly a real demand from real fans to see Snyder's original vision for the DC superhero movie, the actual number was massively misrepresented thanks to bots.
Snyder stepped away from Justice League during filming due to a personal tragedy, leaving Avengers director Joss Whedon to step in and finish the project. According to reports, Whedon went much further than simply overseeing reshoots, making changes to the script to bring down the runtime and lighten the overall tone of the movie. The result was a complete mess of two conflicting visions, and a movie nobody was happy with - critically or commercially.
Fans soon started campaigning for the Snyder Cut, which was ultimately released on HBO Max in 2021 and quickly became the fourth most viewed film on the platform. It also won much more critical praise for boasting a more cohesive vision.
However, after some started to question if the sheer amount of fan interest was genuine, WarnerMedia launched an investigation. It found communities "made up of real and fake authors that spread negative content about WarnerMedia for not restoring the 'SnyderVerse," and directed some really rather shocking harassment toward Warner Bros. then-CEO AnnSarnoff and various other high-level staff involved with the project.
Rolling Stone also worked with a separate security company to verify suspicious activity. They stated "there's no question that bots were involved."
It's unclear how aware Snyder himself was of the true extent of this online campaign.