I think Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck would do it on principle for how ****** over they were. Zack because of Josstice League, that’s obvious enough. His daughter dies tragically by suicide, he leaves the film to take care of himself and his family, and look what WB does to his film. Ben because of Geoff “hope and optimism” Johns attaching himself as co-writer and continually meddling with his great script for The Batman (Ben: “I just couldn’t crack the script” when Jay Oliva said it was the best Batman story he’s ever read). At one point Ben reportedly urged the other actors to join him in walking off the set of Josstice League. Ben bailed on making The Batman and quit the role because he had an excellent script and perfect villain casting in Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke and WB basically kept messing with him. I think they were doing that because WB was at that point out to kill anything Snyderverse related—which very clearly they have done since the critical reaction to BvS in 2016, basically. Ben also saw the handwriting on the wall with what was happening right before his eyes with Whedon rewriting and refilming JL. Like that sort of revision to his work was what was in store for his film. I suspect he passed on making the Batman TV series for HBO Max because he refuses to work with the current regime at WB.
The Snyder cut is film history. It is a very significant event, or development, a milestone, in the complex relationship between studio, auteur, and audience. Guys like Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck understand just how important it is to artistic integrity in the filmmaking industry. I totally have faith that if David Zaslav does decide to green light JL 2 and 3 by Zack, they will find a way to complete the saga.
Completion of the five film saga would simply add to the legendary status of the project. The hype for it would be tremendous. Zaslav knows that. The only question now is will he be a Hollywood good old boy and support the culture that Emmerich is part of, or will he buck that tradition and give the fans what they’re clamoring for. Business-wise it’s obvious but we’ll find out in May, or perhaps before then. It’s only because of Emmerich’s stubborn pride that we haven’t seen it happen—-yet.