Zack Snyder issues a hearty "Suck it, Warner Bros." with Stephen Colbert

We can now add, as a data point, tonight’s big Zack Snyder Late Show sketch, which saw him re-imagine Stephen Colbert’s show in a series of jokes about his particular movie-making peccadillos. Most of the goofs are pretty easy to predict: Over-use of CGI, abundant zombies, directions to deliver every line like a murdered spouse is lingering just-off-camera. But the moment from The Late Show: The Snyder Cut that’s likely to ascend to instant-meme status amongst Snyder’s fans comes right at the end, after Colbert issues a hearty “Suck it, Warner Bros.,” re: his plans to continue working with Snyder’s vision for the Late Show cinematic universe. We then cut to Snyder, who demurs briefly, before looking straight into the camera and adding a “Suck it, Warner Bros.” of his own.

Like the rest of the sketch, it’s all very tongue in cheek—but that doesn’t make it any harder to read into as a real statement of annoyance from a high-profile filmmaker to the studio he spent the vast majority of his career working at. Certainly it makes those calls to “restore the Snyder-verse”—i.e., Snyder’s whole elaborate plan for Justice League sequels, etc.—feel a little less likely, even as Snyder himself has probably never been a more visible or well-known creator. How does one come back from a “suck it” in front of millions of people?