By In early 2021 came the news that “Saltburn” and “Promising Young Woman” writer/director Emerald Fennell was set to write a solo film based around the female magician character Zatanna from the DC Comics.
The film was to have been a part of J.J. Abrams’ “Justice League Dark” universe of DC characters – several projects of which were in development but none that came to fruition.
When James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC and announced their “Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters” slate, “Zatanna” was a notable, but unsurprising, absentee from the list.
Now on the eve of the release of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” the final film of the former DCEU, Fennell has finally confirmed the fate of her film, telling MTV’s Josh Horowitz:
“No. No, it’s not happening. It was, you know what, I loved… So this was all before ‘Promising Young Woman’, actually. So, this was something I was working before ‘Promising Young Woman’ and it was when J.J. Abrams had just arrived at Warner Brothers and was going to reboot the Dark Universe and…
They were going to kind of make this new kind dark, sort of, villain universe, or hero/villain universe. And I just thought he was the coolest. His team at Bad Robot, Hannah, his producer at Bad Robot, was so cool, and so interesting.
And because I love genre of all kinds… so much of ‘Promising Young Woman’ and and ‘Saltburn’ are prodding at a specific genre, that I’m definitely interested in like, ‘Oh okay, I don’t know a huge amount about the superhero genre. It’s not a genre that I naturally gravitate towards.’
So I was like, ’Okay, well, I’d love to… how does one make a movie like that for people like me, who maybe don’t know so much, and wouldn’t necessarily buy a ticket the first time around.’ So it’s sort of that kind of thing. I’m like, ‘Okay, this is interesting.’ And Zatanna is just a really, really cool character.”
Fennell is also accepting that things change at studios, calling it “classic studio stuff” and the project was still fun to do:
“I wrote, in the end, I think, a script that is reasonably demented… in a good way, I think. But in the end, I think the whole universe… was changed. But that’s fine. I love writing. I love writing. I love working with people, so it was kind of really fun to do in the end, whether or not it would been like remotely makeable.”
The project would’ve marked the top-hatted stage illusionist character, one of the most powerful sorcerers in the DC universe, debut on the big screen.
She previously appeared in animated form and once in live-action in a guest-starring capacity on “Smallville” where she was played by second season “Reacher” star Serinda Swan.
The post Fennell Talks Killed DC “Zatanna” Movie appeared first on Dark Horizons.
