Zack Snyder has revealed that he was aware of a Zack Snyder’s Justice League joke being included in Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie ahead of its release earlier this year.
Speaking to Men’s Health Magazine to promote his upcoming sci-fi film Rebel Moon, Snyder shared that Warner Bros. executive Michael DeLuca had his wife and producer partner Deborah Snyder of the joke.
The joke, told by a version of Barbie played by Alexandra Shipp, was used to to describe her time being under the patriarchy of Ryan Gosling‘s Ken: “It’s like I’ve been in a dream where I was really invested in the Zack Snyder Cut of Justice League.”
“They gave us a heads-up,” Snyder said of the joke. “And [Michael DeLuca] said, ‘Hey, there’s a reference to Justice League in the movie. It’s cool and whatever, I hope you guys understand, we think it’s awesome.’”
Snyder went on to share his thoughts on Barbie: “I thought it was great. And I think the joke is pretty good.” However, the director also said that he recognised the joke was at the expense of his loyal Snyder-cut fans, who had campaigned for Snyder’s director’s cut of Justice League to get made and released.
Years after the Snyder Cut‘s release, his fans’ support still shocks him: “The thing that I said to Debbie is — the thing that you need to take a second and think about is that your name is so seamlessly sewed together with a pop-culture phenomenon so big it can exist as a joke in a movie about Barbie. That’s pretty insane. You just need to step back for a second and go like, ‘Whoa, what did we do? What happened? How is that a thing?’”
Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child Of Fire is scheduled for release December 22 on Netflix.
In a four-star review of Barbie, NME wrote: “What follows is a nuanced, rose-tinted comedy adventure, set to a stonking pop soundtrack featuring Lizzo and Billie Eilish, that somehow lives up to the immense hype. To borrow a pun from Ken’s coolest jacket (out of a long lineup), Barbie is more than ‘kenough’.”