Justice League Snyder Cut will be 'separate' from the DC films' continuity, Zack Snyder says

A little over a month since filmmaker Zack Snyder showed off the first footage from his long-fabled, now all-too-real director's cut of Justice League (officially dubbed, of course, Zack Snyder's Justice League but more famously known as the Snyder Cut), the director is back to what he does best: teasing details from a film that many DC fans (and movie stars) thought got done wrong by interim director Joss Whedon. This time, the filmmaker has further distanced this new cut from the path Warner Bros. has decided to go with its newer slate of superhero fare.

Speaking during a YouTube interview, Snyder explained that the new DC films have left his original movies — and the Justice League team-up that was supposed to kick off a crossover course similar to the MCU — behind.

Take a look:

“Frankly, the DC cinematic universe has branched like a tree and blossomed and grown in amazing and great ways," Snyder said. "But for me, where [Justice League] falls, I believe that it really sort of represents its own path. It’s kind of separate now from the DC cinematic universe continuity. And I think that’s a good thing.”

DC has recently released films like the R-rated standalones Joker and Birds of Prey, with the upcoming The Batman also on the docket. The latter has already eyed an HBO Max spin-off series focused on the Gotham police department, so there is a new canon for the world of DC developing on-screen — even if some of the originals are still moving forward, like in Wonder Woman 1984.

But this interview also revealed more tangible details about the cut of the film itself, which — in initial reports — ranged in possibility from a "four-hour director’s cut" to a six-episode miniseries. Now Snyder is narrowing down on the format and the runtime.

“I famously advertised the runtime at 214 minutes,” Snyder said. “Now, in its current state, it’s going to end up being longer than that yet."

So, more than three-and-a-half hours? Sounds like that four-hour director's cut is getting more and more likely. Nothing is set in stone, however, because he's "still working on" the movie, which isn't expected in any form until 2021 at the earliest.

Zack Snyder's Justice League will likely hit HBO Max sometime next year - until then, fans can catch more details at DC's FanDome on Aug. 22.