To call a Zack Snyder movie a passion project seems a little redundant: if there's one thing the Justice League and 300 filmmaker's works don't want
To call a Zack Snyder movie a passion project seems a little redundant: if there’s one thing the Justice League and 300 filmmaker’s works don’t want for, it’s passion. Even so, war drama The Last Photograph is a bit of a special case, having been first discussed way back when in 2007 as a low-key post-Spartan palate cleanser before going through numerous transformations and hold-ups in the years since. But now, per Deadline‘s reporting, Snyder is finally ready to shoot The Last Photograph — and he’s bringing some Rebel Moon friends with him for the ride.
As revealed by Deadline, Stuart Martin and Fra Fee — Den and Balisarius respectively in the _Rebel Moon_iverse — have both been cast in Snyder’s movie, which is expected to start shooting across Iceland, Colombia and Los Angeles later this month. Understood to be something of a micro-budget affair in comparison to Snyder’s more grandiose big-screen offerings, The Last Photograph — written by 300 and Atomic Blonde scribe Kurt Johnstad, and to be composed by Hans Zimmer, Steven Doar, and Omer Benyamin — is, in its director’s own words, “a meditation on life and death, embodying some of the trials that I have experienced in my own life and the exploration of those ideas through image making.”
The official synopsis for the movie, provided by its producers, reads as follows: “An ex-DEA operative must return to the mountains of South America in an effort to find his missing niece and nephew, following the brutal murders of their diplomat parents. Enlisting the aid of a washed-up junkie war photographer, the only person to have seen the face of the killers, he sets out, determined to find the children and the truth, but soon learns he must also face the ghosts of his past. Their journey into the unknown takes them further and further away from civilization, bringing into question everything they believe, while slowly eroding the distinction between real and surreal.”
After years spent making personal stories within epic frameworks to varying degrees of success (for every Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice Ultimate Edition there’s also an Army Of The Dead), the prospect of Snyder turning his striking aesthetic sensibilities and open-heart storytelling style to something more insular and grounded is very intriguing. Here’s hoping The Last Photograph is a snapshot of Zack Snyder at his best, and doesn’t end up with all the best bits left on the cutting room floor. Watch this space!
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