Zack Snyder Says Country Is ‘Too Divided’ for an Adaptation of ‘The Fountainhead’ Now

Kristen Lopez
·2 min read
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With Zack Snyder’s release of his director’s cut of “Justice League” coming to HBO Max this week, many are wondering what the filmmaker’s next project will be. In 2016, Snyder announced his plans to adapt Ayn Rand’s controversial tome “The Fountainhead,” but in a recent interview with the New York Times those plans are on hold for the foreseeable future.

“‘Fountainhead’ right now is on the back burner,” he told the Times. “I don’t know how that movie gets made, at least not right away.” As to why he thinks it’s not happening, Snyder believed the political climate still isn’t right for the feature film. “We need a less divided country and a little more liberal government to make that movie, so people don’t react to it in a certain way.”

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“The Fountainhead” centers on the young architect Howard Roark, whose dream of constructing modernist buildings puts him in opposition with the architectural establishment. The novel was adapted into a movie in 1949, starring Gary Cooper as Roark, and has caught the eye of directors like Michael Cimino and Oliver Stone over the years. Snyder first expressed interest in adapting “The Fountainhead” in a 2016 interview, saying he was attracted to the novel’s “thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something.”

As Snyder noted in 2012, Warner Bros. owns the rights to “The Fountainhead,” which made the property an easier get for him, as every Snyder film except 2004’s “Dawn of the Dead” has been released by Warner Bros. in North America.

Snyder notes in the New York Times interview that he’s in “no rush” with the movie, and this isn’t the first project he’s put aside. In addition to “The Fountainhead,” Snyder has also had the Afghanistan war drama “The Last Photograph” in development for a couple of years. The feature tells the story of a photograph that inspires two men to travel to war-torn Afghanistan. “The Last Photograph” is written by Snyder’s “300” collaborator Kurt Johnstad and is still listed on IMDb as being in pre-production.

Regardless, Snyder fans will still have his long-anticipated “Snyder Cut” of “Justice League” to look forward to. This new version runs just shy of four hours long and will reunite audiences with the original film’s sprawling ensemble. Among them are Ben Affleck as Batman, Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg, Ezra Miller as The Flash, and many more.

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