With Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) comes to an end this week. DC Studios are rebooting it as the DCEU with co-CEO filmmakers James Gunn and Peter Safran. It was previously reported that Fennell was developing a “Zatanna” film for the DCEU, a magical character who fits into what many refer to as DC Comics’ Dark Universe. Fennell confirmed she did write a script, but as you might expect, that project is no longer active.
According to what we can tell, roughly 95% of the old DCEU era—the Snyderverse of Gadot’s Wonder Woman, Ezra’s The Flash, and Momoa’s Aquaman—is being scrapped. James Gunn appears to have chosen to keep elements of his Suicide Squad like Peacemaker (John Cena) and Amanda Waller (Viola Davis).Oscar-winning screenwriter Emerald Fennell appeared this week on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss her new family drama, “Saltburn.”
“No, no, it’s not going to happen.” “But I loved it,” the Zatanna writer said. Interestingly, news of Fennell’s involvement came after the release of his critically acclaimed Sundance debut “Promising Young Woman” in 2020, and most people assumed she got the Zatanna role based on that film. Fennell, on the other hand, revealed that she worked on that project before “Promising Young Woman” made her a star writer/director.
“This was all before ‘Promising Young Woman,’ actually,” she said of the “Zatanna” gig, reminding us all that J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot team were supposed to run the entire Dark Universe side of DC, including a “Justice League Dark” movie. None of that ever happened or came to pass, and WB put a $500 million credit card charge for it.
“This was something I was working on before [that film]. It was when J.J. Abrams had just arrived at Warner Bros. and was going to reboot the DCEU Dark Universe, and they were going to make this kind of dark villain universe or sort of hero/villain universe,” the Zatanna writer added. “I thought he was the coolest, and his team at Bad Robot was so cool and interesting, and because I love genre of all kinds… I was definitely interested,” she explained.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know a huge about the whole superhero genre; it’s not a genre I naturally gravitate towards, so I’d love to know how does one make [a superhero film] like that, for someone like me who doesn’t know so much and wouldn’t necessarily buy a ticket for that first time around. So it was that kinda thing, and Zatanna was a really, really cool character.”
Of course, studio politics played a role in Zatanna’s canceling. Development at Bad Robot seemed to take forever—they also worked on a “Green Lantern” series, which was cast but then scrapped—and the project soon petered out, even before James Gunn took over. Still, Fennell enjoyed working on her script even though she wasn’t sure if it would ever be made.
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“But just like everything…I did write it, but it was complicated; you know, the regimes changed; it’s the classic studio stuff. J.J. is incredible, his team is incredible, and I wrote in the end a script that was reasonably demented—in a good way, I think. But in the end, the whole universe was…changed. And that’s fine; I love writing… it was really fun to do in the end. Whether it would have been remotely makeable… that’s the thing.”
Outside of Zatanna, Fennell also discussed her involvement in working on a draft of Mark Millar’s “Nemesis,” though Millar may have exaggerated her involvement; she only did a few weeks of rewrite work (“not to say I didn’t love it, I just didn’t want to take credit for something I wasn’t instrumental in”). Millar discussed the film adaptation, which is based on a comic book story of the same name that he co-created with artist Steve McNiven, in an interview with Forbidden Planet.
Would you watch a Zatanna movie? Which character would you add to the new DCEU? Let us know! Leave a comment!
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