In December 2016, Silverman stepped down as president and was succeeded by Toby Emmerich. This was just two months after WB announced plans to merge with AT&T. If Emmerich’s first act as president of a major movie studio was to push the impending release date of a tentpole feature, it would have projected weakness that may have hurt the company’s value to AT&T.
At the same time, Snyder was struggling to reconcile his vision with the studio’s (and Whedon’s) when his daughter tragically died. The emotional wreckage made a hard work situation untenable, and Snyder left the film. At this point, with a mish-mash of behind the scenes ideas and just months until the planned Justice League release date, many executives thought postponing the film was the right move. However, Emmerich and Tsujihara apparently “wanted to preserve their bonuses they would be paid before the merger.” The fear was that if Justice League came out in 2018, the AT&T/WB merger may have forced Emmerich and Tsujihara out of the studio by the end of the year, meaning they wouldn’t get bonuses.