It Appears Warner Brother Considered Making A Zatanna Movie

Sseug ohw thgim teg rieht nwo eivom?  Though it wasn’t previously made public, it seems as though Warner Brothers has considered making a ‘Zatanna’ solo movie.  This revelation was buried in an article on Deadline about the sudden heavy emphasis on female superhero media projects in the sentence, “There’s also been talk of films for Supergirl, Zatanna and Batgirl, while male-hero movies like the long-promised Flash solo film or a new Superman installment have lost momentum.”

While the ‘Batgirl’ and ‘Supergirl’ films were known to be in some stage of development, this is the first we’re hearing of a solo ‘Zatanna’ project.  Of course, Zatanna was expected to be one of the lead characters of ‘Justice League Dark’, a movie whose development actually preceded the plans for the DC film shared universe, with Guillermo del Toro spearheading it by writing the script with plans to direct, but the busy director had other commitments and Warner Brothers, at one point, wanted this movie sooner rather than later and took the project away from him.  It eventually ended up with Doug Liman attached, but even he has departed.

Some of the ‘JLD’ characters are being employed elsewhere, with John Constantine now a regular character on ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ and Swamp Thing headlining his own show on DC Universe (which will feature Madame Xanadu, another ‘JLD’ character).  It would make sense to de-emphasize them in the movies and elevate Zatanna, a character that may not be a household name, but who is still quite popular among fans of the comics and animated projects.

It was mentioned that a ‘Zatanna’ movie was considered and while there isn’t much additional info, it is possible that it could still happen.  As was noted in the Deadline article, Warner Brothers initially only had one female-fronted film in their lineup, ‘Wonder Woman’, but after that movie was a massive success, while other more male-skewing projects stalled, it seems as though WB is shifting its focus, with ‘Birds of Prey’ set to begin production in January.  Perhaps they want to test the waters with a better-known character, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn who is fronting ‘BoP’, before taking a risk with a lower-profile character like Zatanna.

Introduced in 1964, Zatanna is the daughter of the Golden Age stage magician/crime fighter Zatara.  Like her father, she works as a stage magician but secretly possesses real mystical abilities, which she invokes by speaking backwards.  She was a recurring supporting character in various comic titles before she joined the Justice League, where she remained for many years and still works with off and on.

Would you like to see a ‘Zatanna’ movie?