Zack Snyder's rise to fame began with 300 and the director returned to his roots during the COVID-19 pandemic, penning a screenplay for a third film in the franchise.
However, Warner Bros. rejected his idea for a third film. While being a guest on The Playlist's The Fourth Wall podcast, Snyder stated, "I just couldn’t really get my teeth into it. Over the pandemic, I had a deal with Warner Bros. and I wrote what was essentially going to be the final chapter in [the] 300 [franchise]. When I sat down to write it I actually wrote a different movie. I was writing this thing about Alexander the Great, and it just turned into a movie about the relationship between Hephaestion and Alexander... A love story."
Snyder continued, "So it really didn’t fit in as the third movie. But there was that concept, and it came out really great. It’s called Blood and Ashes and it’s a beautiful love story, really, with warfare. I would love to do it, [WB] said no… You know, they’re not huge fans of mine."
The Army of the Dead director's recent comments echoed previous ones he's made about working with Warner Bros. Snyder previously shared that the process was less than amicable, stating, "It was cool to do the Snyder Cut of Justice League and that was fun... But Warner Bros. still tortured me the whole time for whatever reason, they can’t help it."
Based on the Dark Horse Comics series by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 300 tells the tale of the Spartan King Leonidas and the 300 warriors he gathered to fight the forces of the Persian king Xerxes. Synder co-wrote and directed 300's film adaptation and produced the follow-up film 300: Rise of an Empire, which was based on Miller's follow-up graphic novel Xerxes.
Source: The Playlist