Zatanna Movie: Emerald Fennell Opens Up About “Demented” DC Project

At one point in time, DC fans were anticipating big-screen projects like Nightwing, Justice League Dark, and Zatanna. The DC film universe has seen some major shakeups, however, and now there’s a whole new slate under James Gunn and Peter Safran. That means that those other projects won’t be happening, including the Zatanna film, but fans can still get some insight into what that film might have looked like courtesy of writer Emerald Fennell. Fennell appeared on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, and during their conversation, she described the script as “reasonably demented”, which would have been a delightful fit for the character.

When asked about the project and if it was still happening, Fennell said, “No, it’s not happening. You know what I loved…I met, this was all before Promising Young Woman actually. This was something I was working on before Promising Young Woman. It was when J.J. Abrams I think had just arrived at Warner Bros. and was going to reboot the Dark Universe, and they were going to make this new kind of like villain-hero universe. And I just thought he was the coolest. His team at Bad Robot, Hannah his producer at Bad Robot was so cool and so interesting.”

“Because I love genre, of all kinds. So much of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn are prodding at a specific genre that I’m definitely interested in like okay, I don’t know a huge amount about the superhero genre. It’s not a genre that I naturally gravitate towards, so I was like okay well, I’d love to know like how does one make a movie like that for people like me who maybe don’t know so much and wouldn’t necessarily buy a ticket the first time around,” Fennell said.

Fennell was excited to work with Abrams and Zatanna as a character, and she was nothing but complimentary of both. She also revealed some details about the script itself, calling it reasonably demented.

“So it was that kind of thing, and I’m like okay this is interesting. And Zatanna is such a really really cool character. And I think like everything I did write it. It was complicated because I think, you know the regime, the things changed, it’s the classic studio stuff. It’s classic studio stuff,” Fennell said. “JJ’s incredible. His team are incredible. I wrote in the end a script that I think is reasonably demented, in a good way think,” Fennell said.

Despite the film not becoming a reality, Fennell loved the experience. “But in the end, I think the whole universe got, plans changed, but you know that’s fine. I love writing. I love writing and working with people, so it was kind of really fun to do in the end. Whether or not it would’ve been remotely makable,” Fennell said.

What do you want to see for Zatanna in this new era of DC films? Let us know in the comments and as always you can talk all things DC with me on Threads @mattaguilarcb!