Zatanna writer and acclaimed director Emerald Fennell has confirmed that the DC movie is officially no longer happening.
On a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused Podcast, Fennell spoke about the Zatanna movie that she had written a script for. After clearly confirming that the project is dead, the writer explained how she came to write the “reasonably demented” script and why the project ended up dying.
“No, it’s not happening,” Fennell stated. “So this was something I was working on before Promising Young Woman, and it was when J.J. Abrams had, I think, just arrived at Warner Bros. and was going to reboot the Dark Universe … and they were going to make this new kind of dark villain universe, or hero-villain universe. Because I love genre of all kinds so much … I [was] definitely interested.
“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, ‘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?’ And Zatanna’s just a really, really cool character … I did write it, but it was complicated because I think the regime … it’s classic studio stuff … I wrote, in the end, a script that is reasonably demented — in a good way. But in the end, I think the whole universe … was changed. That’s fine. I love writing, I love working with people, so it was really fun to do … whether or not it would have been remotely makeable.”
You can view the full podcast below:
Who is Zatanna?
Created by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson, Zatanna Zatara made her first appearance in Hawkman #4 in November 1964. She is the daughter of a famous stage magician named Giovanni Zatara, who debuted during the Golden Age of Comics. Naturally, Zatanna inherited her father’s magical powers and career as a professional stage magician. Some of her powers include the ability to control the elements, telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and manipulation of reality.
