Zack Snyder, having stepped away from 2017’s Justice League after a family tragedy and then shunted out the superhero door by DC, is going back to what he originally made his name for: zombies. And having faced constant interference at DC/Warner Bros., he is heading to a place with seemingly unlimited funds and freedom – Netflix.
Snyder has signed on to direct a zombie movie for the streaming giant titled Army Of The Dead. The story is based on one by Snyder himself, but the script has been penned by Joby Harold (King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword).
The film is set during a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, where a man assembles a group of mercenaries to take the ultimate gamble; venturing into the quarantined zone to pull off a huge heist.
This will mark Snyder’s return to the zombie genre after he first made a name of himself with the surprisingly good 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead. “There are no handcuffs on me at all with this one”, he told THR. “I love to honour canon and the works of art, but this is the opportunity to find a purely joyful way to express myself though a genre […] No one’s ever let me completely loose”.
That’s exactly why he has headed to Netflix, a distributor known for giving their filmmakers creative control. They have taken over the project from Warner Bros., where it was actually originally set up in 2007. The film is reportedly set to start shooting this summer and will have a budget of around $90 million.
Snyder’s name has had some mud slung at it over the past few years thanks to some of the disappointment with the DCEU, but he’s a talented visual filmmaker when he gets out of his own way. It will be fascinating to see what he can do now that he’s outside of a major franchise and free to make a film however he wants.
#Peace.Love.ArmyOfTheDead
