UPDATE 9/1: Per our insiders, the TIFF run is the indie playbook — and Snyder is “well prepared” for a Dark Knight film.
UPDATE: The “Standby” tease has paid off: Snyder has revealed The Last Photograph will world premiere at TIFF on Sunday, September 13, with tickets now on sale.
Zack Snyder posted one word to Instagram: “Standby.”
Attached to it: a carousel of new images from The Last Photograph, including Stuart Martin and Fra Fee.
The post pulled 19.5K likes in its first six hours.
One word is doing a lot of work here, because of where this movie currently sits.
The Last Photograph is finished, with Hans Zimmer scoring.
Snyder dropped the teaser two weeks ago with no studio logo on it, and it was reported days later that the film has no distributor, with buyers reportedly considering it “extremely violent, even by Snyder standards” — the same complaint that preceded every Snyder director’s cut that turned out to be the better movie.
So “Standby” lands on a movie whose entire open question is when and where anyone gets to see it.
Trailer, Distributor, Or Both
Snyder could mean the trailer.
Two weeks from teaser to “Standby” with fresh images is a marketing runway, and fans read it the same way. “Trailer soon,” says one comment.
Another possibility could be a distributor. You don’t tell an audience to stand by without a plan to show them something, and a full trailer usually means a release path, which could even mean he is doing it himself.
Fans have been asking him about self-distributing since the report broke, and they asked again under this post: “Zack you find a distributor yet?”
Still another possibility is both, or something else entirely. Snyder’s Instagram runs cryptic. But the images are The Last Photograph, so whatever “Standby” is for, it likely for this movie.
The Loudest Stretch Snyder’s Had In A While
The tease lands at the end of a loud run.
Snyder returned to Instagram posting the R-rated Rebel Moon director’s cut and shooting the blood moon on his iPhone, then had Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld publicly asking him to call, all while, per our insiders, The Dark Knight Returns sits storyboarded on the far side of the Paramount-Warner Bros. fight.
The Last Photograph is the one piece of Snyder’s slate that does not have to wait for a merger.
Standing by.
