While Zack Snyder‘s slo-motion, yell-a-thon "300" hasn’t aged very well, the movie, and its sequel "300: Rise Of An Empire" (directed by Noam Murro), made money. The first movie was a smash hit, earning over $450 million worldwide. And though the sequel disappointed domestically, internationally — which is far more important to studios these days — the picture pretty much did the same business, and "300: Rise Of An Empire" totaled $337 million around the globe. And while there hasn’t been official chatter about more installments, Snyder reveals that conversations of some kind have been happening.
Talking with Collider, the director revealed there’s an anthology approach being considered, which would see the "300" brand being used to tell more David vs. Goliath-style stories. "We’ve been talking about is there a way, possibly, we move out of Ancient Greece and use it as a framing device for other conflicts that happened throughout history," he said. "I think I mentioned that we talked about the Revolutionary War version, and we talked about the Alamo, and we’ve talked about there’s a battle in China, a ‘Lost Legion’ kind of concept, any of those kinds of things are on the table."
I presume the Revolutionary War movie he’s talking about is the George Washington movie he proposed not so long ago, and from a marketing perspective, it’s kind of smart thinking to extend "300" to encapsulate all kinds of historical moments. Perhaps not unlike how "Cloverfield" is being used to tell various, low-fi supernatural stories.
Meanwhile, the director weighed in on his preferred version of "Watchmen." The adaptation of Alan Moore‘s graphic novel was released in cinemas with a running time of 162 minutes, and was followed by a 186 minute Director’s Cut and a 215 minute Ultimate Cut, the latter of which included the animated comic-within-the-movie, "Tales Of The Black Freighter." But Snyder admits the Director’s Cut is the one that works best for him.
"I think if you’re a crazy fan, which is fine, The Director’s Cut with ‘The Black Freighter’ is for pure comic book freak-out. But for me, the Director’s Cut without ‘The Black Freighter’ is sort of—because it was never designed—I wanted to do ‘The Black Freighter,’ I wanted to do it, but we didn’t really design it to be intercut with the rest of the film, so we kind of had to jerry-rig it in, and though it goes in pretty nicely, I never felt like it was 100% completely organic," he explained. "So for me, the Director’s Cut, which has Hollis’ death and other things like that."
Snyder’s next movie, "Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice" arrives this Friday, and there’s already an R-rated DVD cut in the works that will run about a half hour longer than the theatrical version.
