Zack Snyder gave The Hollywood Reporter a few details about the R rated DVD cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, specifically, how long it will be and why it will be rated R:
[The DVD version] is a half-hour longer, and some of that additional material is some of the stuff we took out for the rating. I was like, ‘Cool, I can put it back in for the director’s cut.’ There was nothing by design. This was the material I just put back in, and then when [the MPAA] looked at it again, they were like, ‘Oh, now the movie’s rated R.’ And, by the way, it’s not a hard R. There’s no nudity. There’s a little bit of violence. It just tips the scale.
A half hour is a lot of footage, considering the theatrical release will clock in at 151 minutes as it is. The will bring the DVD cut to three hours long. There has been a lot of griping online about Snyder and the powers that be piggy backing off the success of the hard R Deadpool, but producer Deborah Snyder addresses that as well:
“Online, everyone’s like, “Oh, they’re doing an R-rated in reaction to Deadpool,” and you’re like (laughing), “We didn’t just shoot it last week, and we also didn’t edit it last week.”
So it sounds like it was a bit more earnest than just trying to keep up with the Joneses. We’ll see what the current PG-13 has in store on March 25, 2016.