Emerald Fennell’s planned solo film for DC Comics’ Zatanna, a powerful stage magician and sorceress, was deemed “too dark” for Warner Bros. Before the studio’s restructuring under James Gunn and Peter Safran, the writer and director revealed this week.
Fennell, known for her function on “Promising Young Woman” and the recently released “Saltburn,” discussed the abandoned project even as promoting “Wuthering Heights” on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. She had been tapped to write the script in early 2021 as part of a broader effort by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions to develop a “Justice League Dark” universe, according to reports at the time.
“I feel it was demented because I was probably going through it at the time,” Fennell said, describing the script as a reflection of her own emotional state following the success of “Promising Young Woman.” “I just finished ‘Promising Young Woman,’ and there was this huge thing in this world that I’d never operated in. I was like, ‘Okay, how do I make the version of a superhero movie that I would connect to emotionally?’ [I was a] woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown.”
She added, “So it’s a script reflective of a woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown, I would say. I suppose it just meant that it was probably too far away from the genre. It was really dark. I haven’t read it for a really long time because I found it really difficult.”
The Zatanna character, created by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson in 1964, first appeared in “Hawkman #4” and has since become a prominent figure in DC Comics, particularly as a member of the “Justice League Dark” team. Prior to Fennell’s project, Guillermo del Toro had too explored a “Justice League Dark” film featuring Zatanna, but that effort also failed to materialize.
Fennell expressed regret that she hadn’t fully delivered what Warner Bros. Was seeking. “I love JJ so much and he took a chance on offering me to do it, and I really wanted to deliver something amazing for them, and I always felt like I hadn’t quite delivered the thing that they wanted.”
Zatanna previously appeared in live-action as a guest star on the television series “Smallville,” portrayed by Serinda Swan. The character’s potential substantial-screen debut remains unrealized following the cancellation of Fennell’s project and the subsequent overhaul of DC’s film slate under Gunn and Safran.
