Filmmaker Zack Snyder hasn’t totally given up on his dream project to adapt Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” book. Trying to make it as a movie for years, Snyder recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast to loosely promote “Rebel Moon,” but also just talk about everything as one always does on that discursive podcast (the conversation is two hours long).
In their long and winding conversation, Rogan ended up talking about the pleasures of binge-watching and asked Snyder if he’d ever considered making a series. The filmmaker said, well, indeed, he had. And now that he’s set up at Netflix, he revealed he pitched turning the “Fountainhead” into a series, but the streamer turned him down.
“Yeah, we’ve talked about it a lot; I mean, nobody wants ‘Fountainhead,’ but that’s what I wanted to do,” he explained. “I pitched them ‘Fountainhead’ ’cause I’ve written this super adaptation of that book, and I just think it’s…I think it would be amazing, but no one wants to make it cause they think it’s… it’s like taboo. Ayn Rand is taboo.”
Written in 1943, Rand’s book centers on Howard Roark, an inflexible young architect who battles against conventional standards and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. Rand always believed her character embodied the concept of the “ideal man,” and his struggle reflected Rand’s belief that individualism is superior to collectivism. In recent years, Rand and her book have been associated with modern-day fascistic thinking (here’s a recent TIME article with good context).
Asked why Netflix wasn’t interested, Snyder said it was because of Rand’s reputation.
“I dunno, she’s taboo among the intelligentsia because they think she’s a fascist, and they think the book’s a piece of fascist propaganda,” he explained.
But Snyder said his interest in the novel is its parallels with modern-day filmmaking and having to battle against studios, something he’s pretty famous for these days.
“That’s not why I like the book,” he continued. “I happen to just like it because, to me, it’s a direct comment on making a movie—a movie about an architect who won’t make the buildings that everyone wants them to make. And the struggle he goes through to get the buildings made the way he wants to make them? Of course, I like that. I’m sure there are plenty of movie directors who don’t like ‘Fountainhead,’ but I just think it just says so much. Ayn Rand wrote ‘Fountainhead’ in direct response to being noted on a script that she had written. She had been studying this movie about skyscrapers, and she kept submitting versions of the script, and they kept noting her and noting her until it was unrecognizable, and she was like, ‘This is what happens to work,’ it gets noted until it disintegrates.”
“So that’s one thing that I’ve always wanted to do, but I don’t know if the world will ever allow that,” he concluded.
As for his two-part R-rated “Rebel Moon” movies, which he recently said would be six hours long, Snyder gave a more concrete timetable for their release. In a recent interview, Snyder said to expect the movies in the summer, but in this conversation with Rogan, he said August would be the target date. Regardless, it doesn’t ever sound like “Fountainhead” is getting made by Snyder anytime soon. Watch the full interview below.