Fennell: My “Zatanna” Film Was ‘Really Dark’

In early 2021, came word that “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn” 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 new slate, it appeared the “Zatanna” film had died. Speaking with Happy Sad Confused this week while promoting her new “Wuthering Heights” film, Fennell touched upon “Zatanna” again.

She revealed that even before James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU reset came along, the movie was already unlikely to happen as it got too dark for the studio:

“I think it was demented because I was probably going through it at the time. 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.

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.

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.”

The project would’ve marked the 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 “Reacher” and “Inhumans” star Serinda Swan.