{"id":422947,"date":"2026-02-13T03:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/422947\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T03:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:57:10","slug":"fennell-my-zatanna-film-was-really-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/422947\/","title":{"rendered":"Fennell: My “Zatanna” Film Was ‘Really Dark’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Warner Bros. Television<\/p>\n

In early 2021, came word that \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d and \u201cSaltburn\u201d writer\/director Emerald Fennell was set to write a solo film based around the female magician character Zatanna from the DC Comics.<\/p>\n

The film was to have been a part of J.J. Abrams\u2019 \u201cJustice League Dark\u201d universe of DC characters \u2013 several projects of which were in development but none that came to fruition.<\/p>\n

When James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC and announced their new slate, it appeared the \u201cZatanna\u201d film had died. Speaking with Happy Sad Confused<\/a> this week while promoting her new \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d film, Fennell touched upon \u201cZatanna\u201d again.<\/p>\n

She revealed that even before James Gunn and Peter Safran\u2019s DCU reset came along, the movie was already unlikely to happen as it got too dark for the studio:<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019d never operated in. I was like, \u2018Okay, how do I make the version of a superhero movie that I would connect to emotionally?\u2019 [I was a] woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s 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\u2019t read it for a really long time because I found it really difficult.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t quite delivered the thing that they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project would\u2019ve marked the stage illusionist character, one of the most powerful sorcerers in the DC universe, debut on the big screen.<\/p>\n

She previously appeared in animated form and once in live-action in a guest-starring capacity on \u201cSmallville\u201d where she was played by \u201cReacher\u201d and \u201cInhumans\u201d star Serinda Swan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Television In early 2021, came word that \u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d and \u201cSaltburn\u201d writer\/director Emerald Fennell was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[94966,96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-422947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-bigslider","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}