Emerald Fennell’s DCU Movie Was Too Demented for J.J. Abrams

Yes, I also forgot that J.J. Abrams had at one point signed a deal with Warner Bros. that would see him make movies set within the DC Universe (or, at least, adjacent to it). That Ta-Nehisi Coates Superman movie he was developing sounded like a really good idea, and I was onboard for him doing a Dark Justice League movie. He even had plans to make another TV show about Constantine. Why not? At that point, anything resembling a plan at the studio had been ripped to shreds several times over at that point.

But much of Abrams’ proposed vision would not come to pass. There were rumblings last year that Coates’ take on the big blue boy scout was still in development, but James Gunn can’t even get two Batmans to work right now, so I doubt it. While we won’t be getting a Constantine show, a sequel movie that brings back Keanu Reeves is still in development, but I don’t have much hope for that either. And while DC has been trying to get a Justice League Dark movie off the ground for over a decade, if they couldn’t get it made with Guillermo del Toro, they aren’t going to get it made.

What I did not remember about Abrams’ attempt to change the hierarchy of the DC Universe is that he had hired Emerald Fennell to write a movie about Zatanna, a magician from the DCU (and Justice League Dark) who can cast spells by speaking words backwards. She’s honestly never been my favorite character, and her powers feel like something that would work better in a comic book. However, I really liked Promising Young Woman, Fennell’s film directorial debut (which she also wrote), and it sounded like she was going to bring some similarly dark energy to Zatanna.

“I think it was demented because I was probably going through it at the time,” Fennell explained with a laugh on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. She went on to note that she had just finished work on Promising Young Woman, a darkly satirical film about a woman getting revenge on abusive “nice guys,” and was in a dark place. It led to her take on the film, with her saying, “It was a kind of superhero movie, and I was 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.”

I don’t want anyone to have a nervous breakdown, but I’m always happy to hear someone say that they were looking for an emotional entry point for their superhero film. Those movies have to be about something more than just superpowers, and I bet Fennell would have delivered that. She goes on to mention that she really wanted to deliver for Abrams, as she was grateful that he had given her a shot, but that she ultimately did not give them what they wanted.

Things like this come and go all the time, but this one feels like more of a bummer because it sounds like she had a very interesting in for the project. But that’s the game. Warner Bros. is currently up for sale again, which could even derail James Gunn’s vision, whether he has a five-year plan or not.