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Out of the Toronto International Film Festival<\/a> last week, reviews for Zack Snyder<\/a>\u2019s The Last Photograph painted a picture of a director in decline. The 300 filmmaker\u2019s long-gestating, independently financed passion project \u2014 a Searchers<\/a>-inspired revenge thriller about an ex-DEA agent looking for his murdered sibling\u2019s kids in South America with the help of a drug-addict photographer \u2014 managed to unify reviewers in howling discontent.<\/p>\n IndieWire lamented<\/a> The Last Photograph\u2019s \u201ccallow psychology and interminably dull plotting that no amount of gratuitous, unengaging violence or nudity can overcome.\u201d The Playlist gave credit to the maximalist Snyder for setting his latest in the present-day real world, absent his preferred sci-fi and supernatural trappings \u2014 and then proceeded to rip the director a new lens aperture. \u201cSnyder\u2019s talent for image-making is on display, as is his storytelling ineptitude,\u201d the outlet wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe Last Photograph is dead on arrival; it just doesn\u2019t play.\u201d<\/p>\n No director under any circumstance welcomes being sandbagged to a mere 19 percent<\/a> freshness on the Tomatometer. But for Snyder \u2014 who developed The Last Photograph off and on for two decades around his tortured labors on DC\u2019s lugubrious Justice League<\/a> and through the death of his daughter Autumn in 2017 \u2014 such an outcome is particularly calamitous. After scaling the heights of blockbusterdom as Christopher Nolan\u2019s chosen steward to carry Warner Bros.\u2019 post\u2013Dark Knight DC Extended Universe into the future, Snyder stopped playing nice with his longtime studio home, according to insiders. A bruising<\/a>, ultimately successful campaign to release the \u201cSnyder Cut<\/a>\u201d of Justice League, which reports indicate had secretly been orchestrated<\/a> by the director himself as the general of a vast bot army<\/a> that ratcheted up pressure on Warner Bros., established his reputation as fantasy filmdom\u2019s most divisive auteur. Then, when work on the back lot all but dried up, he retreated to the indulgences of Netflix, directing a pair of the streamer\u2019s biggest-budgeted and most poorly received movies: the PG-13 sci-fi space operas Rebel Moon, Parts One<\/a> and Two<\/a> (for both of which he also secured R-rated \u201ccompletely different<\/a>\u201d director\u2019s-cut releases).<\/p>\n Viewed in this context, The Last Photograph was supposed to be a reset \u2014 a $10 million passion project, for which Snyder served as his own cinematographer, co-written with frequent collaborator Kurt Johnstad. Snyder, who came down with COVID while shooting, once had Sean Penn and Christian Bale attached as stars (Scottish Hugh Jackman doppelg\u00e4nger Stuart Martin<\/a> and Irish actor-singer Fra Fee<\/a> ultimately brought those roles to the screen). Still, it was intended to both bring the filmmaker back to basics and reestablish his cinematic bona fides.<\/p>\n Instead, the opposite seems to have occurred. Arriving at Toronto as an acquisition title<\/a>, The Last Photograph departed the Great White North this week with no deal in place for theatrical or streaming distribution. \u201cPeople only get so many shots on goal before you\u2019re like, They\u2019ve either lost their magic or they can\u2019t handle commercial material,\u201d says a veteran former studio executive. \u201cZack\u2019s stock has gone down. You can\u2019t argue that. Doing something like The Last Photograph was going back to the fundamentals, just make a quality movie. And it\u2019s not landing with audiences or critics.\u201d<\/p>\n I canvassed various industry observers and Hollywood studio and streaming executives to ask whether they thought The Last Photograph has landed Snyder in directors\u2019 jail: an impermanent professional purgatory that has variously been occupied by Josh Trank<\/a>, Damien Chazelle<\/a>, Tom Hooper<\/a>, Marc Forster<\/a>, and Guy Ritchie<\/a>, among many others, for such sins as being difficult and directing flops. (Irascible Die Hard director John McTiernan famously served time in both directors\u2019 jail and nonmetaphorical federal prison for lying to FBI agents<\/a> in 2007.) The consensus on Snyder was mixed. While there was universal agreement that he is unlikely to be handed the reins of a $300 million tentpole title again anytime soon, his track record of success with hits like the 2013 Superman reboot Man of Steel<\/a> and self-proclaimed \u201cgayest movie ever,\u201d 300<\/a> \u2014 along with a certain demonstrated fan rapport (aided or not by bot armadas) \u2014 has left the cell door ajar. \u201cZack is not necessarily in directors\u2019 jail,\u201d more than one studio executive told me. \u201cBut he is on probation.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University\u2019s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, there are three types of directors\u2019 jail. \u201cThe first kind is you have a flop. There\u2019s not a single major director who hasn\u2019t had one \u2014 Nolan and Spielberg included,\u201d Galloway says. \u201cThat\u2019s county jail. Then federal lockup is when you do something so morally offensive or heinous that people are afraid to go near you, whatever the price; the studios aren\u2019t just investors, they\u2019re brands, and they have to protect those brands against vast global audiences that are easily offended.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cZack Snyder is not a moral leper,\u201d Galloway continues. \u201cBut there\u2019s a third kind of directors\u2019 jail: when hubris and chutzpah lead to a fall, when somebody\u2019s ego and lack of judgment lead to a collapse. When you have flops, the power shifts. This director who\u2019s had three disappointments in a row is the person to invest in? It\u2019s the old thing: Be nice to people while you\u2019re going up because you want them to be there when you\u2019re going back down.\u201d<\/p>\n By conventional Hollywood wisdom, the best time to hire a talented director can be when they\u2019re coming off a big miss; they have so much more to prove and will often work for cheap. Exhibit A: Gore Verbinski<\/a>. Through the aughts, his megabudget Pirates of the Caribbean movies ranked among the industry\u2019s biggest global blockbusters, turning crummy theme-park IP into multibillion-dollar-grossing premium cinematic product for Disney and anointing Johnny Depp a superstar in the process. But after Verbinski\u2019s ill-begotten 2013 adaptation of The Lone Ranger died in the saddle at the box office, he was relegated to directors\u2019 jail. Between 2017 and February of this year, he didn\u2019t release a film \u2014 but not for lack of trying. Verbinski finally pulled himself out of career oblivion with the gonzo sci-fi action-adventure Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die. His first low-budget indie got a raft of positive reviews out of its premiere at Austin\u2019s Fantastic Fest and effectively put the director back on Hollywood\u2019s radar as a for-hire filmmaker.<\/p>\n Snyder, it is worth noting, has been using his Toronto International Film Festival press rounds, ostensibly in support of The Last Photograph, to drum up<\/a> interest<\/a> in his planned Escape From New York<\/a> reboot, detailing Jeffrey Dean Morgan\u2019s interest in the lead role as well as the project\u2019s intended mixture of B-movie kitsch and social commentary.<\/p>\n In Galloway\u2019s view, now that Snyder has level-changed so drastically over his past few films \u2014 from studio gigantism, to diminishing returns and reputation on streaming, to indie infamy \u2014 the director\u2019s only remaining strategy is to once again prove he can play nice in the Hollywood sandbox. \u201cHe\u2019s paraded his ego enough but he\u2019s certainly talented. He has demonstrated enough ability to direct a certain kind of film,\u201d says Galloway. \u201cNow, he has to prove he has the ability to make that kind of film at a much lower budget. And he\u2019ll be back.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n