Zack Snyder penned a third entry in the 300 series during lockdown – but Warner Bros wasn’t interested.
300 was the film that really launched Zack Snyder’s career. Sure, he’d already made Dawn of the Dead (a world he is returning to with his upcoming Netflix film, Army Of The Dead), but his second film, 300, would quadruple the box-office of his debut feature and ultimately lead to him getting to make Watchmen, his dream project. Snyder would pen the sequel too, 2014’s 300: Rise Of An Empire, which was directed by Noam Murro.
However, when it came time to write a trilogy instalment for the series, Warner Bros took a look at his script and rejected it, Snyder has revealed, stating: “I just couldn’t really get my teeth into it”.
“Over the pandemic, I had a deal with Warner Brothers and I wrote what was essentially going to be the final chapter in 300. But when I sat down to write it I actually wrote a different movie. I was writing this thing about Alexander the Great, and it just turned into a movie about the relationship between Hephaestion and Alexander. It turned out to be a love story. So it really didn’t fit in as the third movie.”
Warner Bros clearly agreed, passing on the chance to make another 300 film with Snyder. This could also in part have something to do with the filmmaker’s deteriorating relationship with the studio, frayed already by clashes over the direction of his recut version of Justice League. Snyder himself obliquely references this, saying: “[It] came out really great; it’s a beautiful love story, really, with warfare. I would love to do it, [WB] said no… you know, they’re not huge fans of mine. It is what it is.”
Snyder seems to have moved on regardless, so it seems that we may never see that third film in the 300 saga, but who knows? If Zack Snyder’s Justice League has taught us anything, it’s that you can never say never in this business.
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