Oh, Zack. Never change.
This delightful/petrifying news comes from an extensive new profile of the Batman v Superman director conducted by Bloomberg Business today. The wide-ranging interview covers Snyder’s career and, rather bizarrely, his beef with short Batmen, but it ends on this fantastic kicker:
Meanwhile, Snyder is spending late nights in his cavernous office working on the upcoming Justice League movie. He’s also thinking about making films that aren’t comic book adaptations. Sort of. One of these days, he’d like to make one about George Washington in the style of 300. He has a picture in his office of the Revolutionary War hero crossing the icy Delaware on his way to decimate the British in the Battle of Trenton. “We were talking about it,” Snyder says. “The first thing we asked was, well, how are we going to make it look? I pointed at this painting. It looks like 300. It’s not that hard.”
That’s right. Zack Snyder not only has a print of Emanuel Leutze’s iconic painting Washington Crosses the Delaware in his office, but he looked at it, and thought “Hmmm… this would make a really good 300-style action movie.”
Is the world ready for a gritty, extreme movie about the American Revolutionary War? Especially one directed by Zack Snyder? As a Brit I might be slightly biased in my opinion, but I kind of dread the idea of watching a shirtless George Washington kicking Johann Rall off the side of a cliff in slow-motion, presumably while the sun’s light is blotted out by eagle tears or something. Because freedom.
But goddammit, I want him to try. Go for it, Zack. Give us George Washington: The 300-ening. This madness has to be committed to screen.
Horatio Greenough’s ‘Enthroned Washington’ sculpture, 1840. Photo taken by Wally Gobetz, licensed through Creative Commons.