Summary

Emerald Fennell confirms her Zatanna script won’t be part of the upcoming DC Universe. Fennell finished the screenplay for the film, and she believes Zatanna is a “really cool character.” Despite the script being scrapped, Fennell enjoyed the process and described her story as “reasonably demented.”

There’s nothing magical about writer Emerald Fennell’s Zatanna vanishing, but it’s happened all the same. Before the conception of Peter Safran and James Gunn’s upcoming DC Universe (DCU), Fennel wrote a script for what was supposed to be the first big-screen adaptation of the DC Comics character. But while visiting with Josh Horowitz on the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Fennell confirmed that her Zatanna will not be a part of the DCU. Fennell said:

“No. No, it’s not happening. It was… you know what… I loved, I loved [it]. I met, so this was all before Promising Young Woman, actually. So, this was something I was working on before Promising Young Woman. And it was when J.J. Abrams had just, I think just arrived at Warner Bros. and was going to like reboot the Dark Universe.
And they were going to take, you know, they’re were going to kind of make this new sort of dark villain universe or sort of hero/villain universe. And I just thought he was the coolest. And his team at Bad Robot, Hannah, his producer at Bad Robot, was so cool and so interesting. And because I love genre of all kinds — so much of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn are like, you know, prodding at a specific genre.”

Fennell continued:

“I was definitely interested and like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I don’t know a huge about the superhero genre. It’s not a genre I naturally gravitate towards, so I was like, ‘Okay, well, I’d love to know how does one make a movie like that for people like me who maybe don’t know so much and wouldn’t necessarily buy a ticket the first time around. So it’s sort of that kind of thing I’m like, ‘Okay, this is interesting.’ And Zatanna is just a really, really cool character.”

Related: The 13 Best DC Movies of All-time, According to Rotten Tomatoes

A ‘Reasonably Demented’ Zatanna
DC Comics

Emerald Fennell did in fact finish writing her script for the Zatanna film, which has been scrapped and won’t appear in Peter Safran and James Gunn’s DCU. Fennell described the whole process as “complicated” because the screenplay she penned was for the now defunct DCEU. However, Fennell admitted to Josh Horowitz that her Zatanna story was “reasonably demented” in the same sit-down:

“And I think it just… I wrote in the end I think a script that is reasonably demented — in a good way. I think it would have been like kind of [demented], but in the end, I think the whole universe got kind of you know was changed. So, but you know that’s fine. I love writing. I love writing, I love working with people, so it was kind of really fun to do in the end. Whether or not it would have been like remotely makeable… [laughs]”

Fennell and Horowitz shared a laugh when the writer revealed that she didn’t have to worry if the finished film cost $500 billion to produce, or if it included a “28-minute sex scene in the sky.” Perhaps Fennell will work within the confines of the DCU or MCU eventually. She wasn’t striving for that goal as a child, though.

When she was only 7 or 8 years old, Fennell told her parents that she wanted to be an actress, write stories about murder and live in America. Three decades later, 38-year-old Fennell is a Hollywood player. And her most recent project Saltburn, which she directed, wrote and produced, can be seen on Prime Video.