Director Emerald Fennel Explains Why Her Zatanna Film Was "Demented" And Was Ultimately Scrapped

Director Emerald Fennel, who is promoting her Wuthering Heights film, recently explained why she had previously described her scrapped Zatanna film as “demented.”

Back in 2021, it was reported that Fennel was writing a Zatanna film that was to be produced by J.J. Abrams as part of his Justice League Dark universe that never came to fruition. In June of that year, Fennel described the film as “really quite dark.”

She told Empire the film was “an opportunity to make something really quite dark. And that appealed to me, to make something big and scary. I love that stuff.”

In 2023, she described the film to Josh Horowitz as “reasonably demented.”

Now, in a new interview with Horowitz to promote Wuthering Heights, she explained how it was “reasonably demented.”

She said, “Well, I think it was demented because I was probably going through it at the time. … I was like, ‘Okay, how do I make the version of a superhero movie that like I would connect to emotionally, which is sort of the woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown. So it’s a script reflective of the woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown, I would say.”

As for why it was scrapped, she concurred with Horowitz that it was likely too personal. She added, “It was really dark. … And I always felt like I hadn’t quite maybe delivered the thing that they wanted. … But I wish I had been able to deliver the thing that they wanted.”

Finally, she concluded saying, “You’re making me remember scenes. I’m like, ‘Oh, nobody would have made that. Nobody would have made it.”

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