Live-Action Zatanna Movie Reportedly In The Works From Warner Bros.

Zatanna, the spell-casting superhero who has had chairs on the Justice League and Justice League Dark, apparently once again has a movie in the early stages of development, according to Jeremy Conrad at DCEU Mythic. The report has little in the way of specific details, although the idea of Zatanna getting her own movie has been floated a few times, as recently as 2018, with the character recently rumored to have an appearance in The Suicide Squad (filmmaker James Gunn rejected that theory). It seems plausible that the film is one of two mystery projects that fans had spotted built into the structure of the DC FanDome mobile website.

In more recent comics, Zatanna’s rocky romance with John Constantine has been a frequent driver of stories for both characters. It is not clear whether Constantine will be part of her film, although Conrad reports that Zatanna is distinct from the Justice League Dark TV series from Bad Robot, planned for HBO Max.

Fans have wondered whether a Justice League Dark show might center on Constantine and Zatanna, key players in the comics and the animated movies. That had led to some speculation (and/or worry) that Constantine might be pulled from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. With a new, unrelated Zatanna movie, it seems more likely that either Warner Bros. is happy enough with two different versions of each character being out there, or that neither of the two will be in Justice League Dark.

“The relationship with Zatanna is something that I’ve not explored in live action; that’s one character that I would love to see John in live action,” Matt Ryan, who played he character on the Constantine TV show before coming to Arrow and finally Legends of Tomorrow, recently told ComicBook.com. “It’s funny, because when I first read ‘Dangerous Habits,’ which is the first comic I read, and I fell in love with that, that was primarily, it’s a bit funny in a way, I feel like now that I have fleshed that out in the animation — and we did on this season of Legends as well — it’s almost like I have to kind of find another thread now. It’s a funny thing because I was hopped on that, that was such a motivational part of John for me for a long time, and what is going to be interesting about next season of Legends now is going back and kind of finding the drives now that he’s evolved through that in a way, and that’s interesting.”

In its earlier incarnation, Zatanna was one of a trio of female-led superhero movies reported to have gone into development at Warner Bros., with the others being Supergirl and Batgirl. The recent rumors that Michael Keaton might join the DC film universe as an aging Batman to mentor younger heroes included a brief mention that one of the potential heroes for him to mentor would be Batgirl. The Supergirl movie seems to have been a little less fortunate, with plans for the film reportedly stalled after Henry Cavill struck a deal to return as Superman.

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