Blood and Ashes | Zack Snyder

[Cremildo]

Zack Snyder may have his hands full launching Rebel Moon, his sci-fi fantasy film that Netflix unveils Dec. 22, but that doesn’t mean the energetic filmmaker isn’t busy developing other projects.

Enter Blood and Ashes. The film began life as a sequel to 300 and 300: Rise of an Empire, and was one of the last projects Snyder worked on before officially leaving Warner Bros. after the debacle that was Justice League. But what he turned in what was quite different from a 300 sequel.

Blood and Ashes, which he partially wrote while shooting Army of the Dead for Netflix in 2019, ended up focusing on the relationship between Alexander the Great and his second in command, Haphaestion. It was a gay love story that was also an ancient Greek war epic, one he said then-Warners executive Courtenay Valenti liked and championed.

The studio, perhaps unsurprisingly, given its subject matter and the tense circumstances between itself and the filmmaker following his exit from Justice League, ultimately didn’t go for it.

But the project may be back in play as Snyder recently told THR that he and his wife and producing partner Deborah Snyder, have gotten the rights back from the studio — and are free to shop it elsewhere.

“We got the rights back so we can make if we want it,” Snyder said during an interview for this week’s THR cover story. “I don’t know what the marketplace is for an incredibly homoerotic, super violent, super sexual movie. But maybe it’s perfect.” source