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DC’s cancelled Zatanna movie would’ve been a “demented” look at a woman going through a nervous breakdown
Why DC’s Zatanna movie was never made, according to screenwriter Emerald Fennell
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In 2021 Warner Bros. announced that they were developing a Zatanna film for HBO Max. The film would’ve tied into the Justice League Dark television series J.J. Abrams was developing at the time. 'Wuthering Heights' director and screenwriter Emerald Fennell was tasked with writing the script, which she described as a demented look at a woman going through a nervous breakdown.
“I think it was demented because I was probably going through it at the time,” Zatanna screenwriter Emerald Fennell said during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I had just finished Promising Young Woman, and there was this huge thing in this world that I’d never operated in. And again, it was a kind of superhero movie, and I was l like, okay, how do I make the version of a superhero movie that I would connect to emotionally, which is sort of the woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown.”
She continued, describing the screenplay as being "a script reflective of the woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown, I would say. And in terms of what that means, well, 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.”
Justice League Dark and Zatanna never got off the ground, and both were eventually cancelled by Warner Bros. executives. Fennell said that she is grateful for the opportunity to work on the film, even if she felt her script got a bit wild.
“The thing is, I love [J. J. Abrams] 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 maybe delivered the thing that they wanted. I haven’t read it since, and I wonder if I read it now, I’d be more generous towards myself. But I felt like, I wish I had been able to deliver the thing that they wanted. They were really lovely about it.”
At the end of the day Fennell doesn’t blame Warner Bros. for axing the film. Looking back to the script, Fennell believes it was too weird to ever be made. “Nobody would have made that. Nobody would have made it.”
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