Emerald Fennell on ‘Zatanna’: ‘An opportunity to make something really quite dark’

Actor-filmmaker Emerald Fennell says she is looking forward to working on the DC Films’ upcoming movie about superhero Zatanna as it will allow her to go “dark” in a tentpole Hollywood project.

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Fennell, who won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for her directorial debut “Promising Young Woman” earlier this year, is attached to write the script for “Zatanna”.

The project hails from studio Warner Bros and filmmaker JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot.

“Zatanna is really interesting… what Warner Brothers are doing – they’re letting people be, or at least wanting to be – led by the story. And there are lots of things about her that felt like they could be really, really interesting.”

“And it’ll be an opportunity to make something really quite dark and that appealed to me, to make something big and scary. I love that stuff,” the writer-director told Empire magazine.

Created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Murphy Anderson in 1964, Zatanna is a magician like her father Zatara.

Zatanna has been involved with the Justice League, has had a childhood with Batman and was romantically linked to character John Constantine, the occult master who will be the subject of an HBO Max series produced by Abrams.

Fennell, 35, said she is excited about working with Abrams, known for films like “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and “Mission: Impossible III”.

“The things about ‘Zatanna’ that’s so interesting is firstly working with Bad Robot And J J (Abrams). If you grew up loving things like ‘Jurassic Park’ and Spielberg and all of those Hollywood-Hollywood movies, J J is just so exciting,” she said.

The director, who is expecting her second child with filmmaker-husband Chris Vernon, said also she is planning to take a break before getting back to work.

“I’m going to have this baby, take some time off and then I’ve got a couple of things I’m writing to direct. And what I’m going to do I think, because it was so wonderful on ‘Promising Young Woman’, with this one I’m not going to tell anyone. Nobody knows about them, so I’ll just deliver the scrips and see if anyone likes them and wants to make them,” she added.

Fennell, who previously worked on critically-acclaimed series “Killing Eve” and also featured in Netflix royal drama “The Crown”, made history earlier this year when her directorial debut movie “Promising Young Woman” bagged five Oscar nominations.

The filmmaker became the first woman director to be nominated for best director for a directorial debut. Her films also earned Academy Award nods for best picture, editing and actress for Carey Mulligan.