Zack Snyder has been spending the past five years talking about “The Fountainhead” and wanting to turn Ayn Rand’s politically charged novel into a film. But over that time, he’s worked on a number of other projects, with DC superheroes and zombies. So, does that mean “The Fountainhead” is next in line after “Army of the Dead?” Not so much. You see, society just isn’t ready for Snyder’s version of the film, just yet. So says the director.
According to an interview on the Life is Short with Justin Long podcast (via UPROXX), Zack Snyder explained why he’s pumping the brakes on directing “The Fountainhead.” Though, just because he’s not actively working on it right this moment, a film adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel is still something he wants to get made.
“It’s a book that is so politically charged that we need a more liberal government to do ‘The Fountainhead’ so that everyone won’t freak out or something,” Snyder said.
He added, “To me, it’s like, if you’re a filmmaker, you sort of understand if you’re looking at it from that lens, building a building (the subject of ‘The Fountainhead’) and making a movie are very similar. You’re making little compromises constantly. Maybe one story less, and it’ll be very good. Does it really need all those fancy window frames? Maybe just make the windows. You wanted a mansion, and you end up with something that sort of looks like a house. For me, that’s always what ‘The Fountainhead’ was about. For a lot of people, it’s a big political thing, but for me, it’s not so much about that.”
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Zack Snyder is an interesting filmmaker in the sense that he’s tough to pin down. You can kinda, sorta cobble together a bit of his political leanings and philosophical ideas based on his films, but even still, there are moments where he might surprise you. So, while I don’t doubt that his idea for “The Fountainhead” is to make the film a bit more apolitical than what people assume it’ll be, it’s hard to believe there aren’t any political motivations behind his wanting to make the feature.
That is to say, the ideas presented by Rand in “The Fountainhead” aren’t necessarily open to vast degrees of interpretation. Her philosophy of Objectivism is fairly clear when it comes to ethics and political motivations. There’s a reason why Libertarians and Conservatives have latched onto her writing, as her philosophical tenets seem to promote the idea of self-interest and individual rights above those of the greater society. So, while you can take the surface-level story of “The Fountainhead,” which is about the life of an architect and the construction of a building, and adapt it into a feature, you really can’t follow the story without including some of those political messages. In that way, it’s a bit disingenuous to say that the film is “not so much” about politics, like what Snyder claims.
Of course, we’re discussing a film that is merely in the developmental process and isn’t close to arriving in theaters. But for those Snyder fans wondering what the status is, it appears the filmmaker is putting “The Fountainhead” on hold for now.
