Zack Snyder directing Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead

[imsounoriginal]

Zack Snyder says next project is an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead

Zack Snyder has talked about working on an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead since 2016, but now the director is saying this project will be his next film.

Snyder responded to questions from fans on Vero, the social media site he often posts behind-the-scenes photos, about his current project. Snyder didn’t provide any more details, but his new comment confirms the project has been in development for years.

“I’ve always felt like The Fountainhead was such a thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something,” Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “Warner Bros. owns [Ayn Rand’s] script and I’ve just been working on that a little bit.”

Snyder’s announcement and continued endorsement of Rand’s controversial novel haven’t gone unnoticed. The Fountainhead, released in 1943, is about a young architect who refuses to constrain his visions just to appease other architects. His ideas are modernist and, despite the backlash he receives, the architect refuses to change his own beliefs just to fit in. The Fountainhead is, at its core, a book about the supposed struggles individuals have to go through and the godawful creative stifling that comes with conformity. (Hmm.)

That’s not entirely what makes it controversial, of course. Rand is accused of painting a world without any sympathetic characters and portraying female characters as less than men; not as able as their male counterparts, and existing just to serve mens needs. Critics have also accused Rand of treating rape like an insignificant detail; a rape occurs during the first encounter between Rand’s main protagonist, Howard Roark, and his partner, Dominique Francon.

It’s a problematic book, but it’s been adapted for film before. A 1949 film starring Gary Cooper managed to bring it to screen pretty adequately. But people have suggested that Snyder, best known for creating grim, bleak superhero movies with unlikable characters and subverted female roles, isn’t the best man for adapting The Fountainhead. As The A.V. Club said in 2016:

"Of course, there is the possibility that Snyder doesn’t really care what Rand would’ve thought and he just thinks The Fountainhead is cool story about a guy who makes awesome skyscrapers. That’s about the same level of depth he brought to his Watchmen adaptation, his 300 adaptation, and all of his other movies, so maybe his Fountainhead will be less about celebrating a gross ideology and more about how badass it is to see a guy design buildings in slow-motion."

Snyder didn’t mention when the movie would be finished, but we’ve reached out to Warner Bros. for more information.

from Polygon

[Batman1980]

[Creed]

Nice.

[imsounoriginal]

“I’ve always felt like The Fountainhead was such a thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something,” Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “Warner Bros. owns [Ayn Rand’s] script and I’ve just been working on that a little bit.”

Zack Snyder is about to make a movie about the creative process at the studio that basically fired him while he was making his last movie. Oh I can't wait for this.

[dgoswald]

Haha, who needs subtext?

[The Debts]

Finally he's freed from all of this DCEU nonsense.

[P-Rock]

Sounds like something totally different for Snyder. Curious how this will turn out.

[stvn1974]

I think I am going to troll threads all around the internet for this film like certain people do about Disney's Star Wars.

[paradise.lost]

Originally Posted by P-Rock

Sounds like something totally different for Snyder. Curious how this will turn out.

Sucker Punch: Part Deux...

[paradise.lost]

Originally Posted by dgoswald

Haha, who needs subtext?

Love it. The entire article is such a joyous read. It's a doozy from start to finish.

[sandman slim]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

Zack Snyder is about to make a movie about the creative process at the studio that basically fired him while he was making his last movie. Oh I can't wait for this.

Yayyy! Irony!

Seriously, a #metoo era adaptation of a misogynistic drama about an architect based on a book hardly anyone has read by a director known mainly for megabudget superhero films? Yeah, this is gonna be a MASSIVE hit...

[paradise.lost]

Originally Posted by sandman slim

Yayyy! Irony!

Seriously, a #metoo era adaptation of a misogynistic drama about an architect based on a book hardly anyone has read by a director known mainly for megabudget superhero films? Yeah, this is gonna be a MASSIVE hit...

I was going to write something even more simple about why this is gonna be a massive hit but it would cause some people here to have an aneurysm, so just gonna stick with what you said instead. I am genuinely curious about what the budget is going to be.

[Kaiju]

Eh. Wish him all the best, but he should go back to horror. His remake of Dawn of the Dead might be his best work. That or Watchmen.

[CANUCKS FAN]

loved the book and the movie
would like to see this.

[GLaDOS]

[Aclea]

Ah yes, the film that Michael Cimino was going to make after Heaven's Gate...

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by Aclea

Ah yes, the film that Michael Cimino was going to make after Heaven's Gate...

So basically it's weirdly appropriate that Snyder's doing this after Justice League?

[Falaskan]

Originally Posted by The Debts

Finally he's freed from all of this DCEU nonsense.

But is he? I get the feeling he'll be compared to his DC films for at least a decade. To be fair, I think he got pretty close to hitting the mark with those films.

[The Debts]

Originally Posted by Falaskan

But is he? I get the feeling he'll be compared to his DC films for at least a decade. To be fair, I think he got pretty close to hitting the mark with those films.

Man of Steel was great for the first two thirds up until that dumb Pa Kent/Tornado scene and the nearly relentless onslaught of action Zod and his troops lay upon the world. To the film's credit it still mages to be entertaining but it doesn't live up the poetical it had initially.

BVS was a mess from beginning to end despite the occasional moments of brilliance (like the stuff involving Batfleck and WW). It gets a bit better in the final third but not enough for me to look past what a misfire the whole enterprise is.

Finally, haven't seen Justice League but based on wack-ado reshuffle it got and Snyder loosing his daughter during production, none of the signs I saw made it look good.

[imsounoriginal]

Don't wanna turn this into another DC thread, but the complaints about MoS becoming a blur of action at the end never made sense. That final Supes/Zod fight is really only a few minutes, there's just all the stuff with the World Engines beforehand and the scrap in Smallville that happens a bit earlier. Mostly agree re: BvS, I still come out overall positive but that one's started becoming difficult to get through. And Justice League is a fun live-action episode of the cartoon, nothing more. And for better or worse, there's very little that makes it identifiable as a Zack Snyder movie.