The filmmaker is directing his first original project in a decade.
It’s been 17 years since Zack Snyder made his feature debut with Dawn of the Dead (2004), a remake of George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie movie of the same name.
With that film, Snyder relaunched a cycle of both horror remakes and zombie films that would shaping pop culture over the past two decades, and positioned him as one of the hottest filmmakers of his generation.
This year of marked a successful creative and critical status for the director who has developed a cult following over the past decade, first with the long-awaited release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max, and now with Army of the Dead on Netflix.
It’s the second milestone that will likely have the bigger effect on Snyder’s future–a partnership with Netflix and a franchise for Army of the Dead.
The husband-wife movie-making duo Zack and Deborah Snyder said it was a “fairly easy” choice to remove the scandal-plagued Chris D’Elia from their picture.
In an interview with Vanity Fair published Friday, the husband-wife movie-making duo said it was a “fairly easy” choice to remove the scandal-plagued D’Elia from their zombie heist film and do reshoots with Notaro. But it was a costly decision.
“It was an expensive one,” said producer Deborah Snyder. Director Zack Snyder put the figure at “a few million.” Added Deborah, “I will say, Netflix did the right thing. They put their money where their mouth is.”
Last summer, D’Elia was accused by multiple women of sexually harassing underage girls. In February, the comic-actor posted a video on his YouTube page, saying “I do have a problem,” but maintained he did nothing illegal. D’Elia was dropped by CAA amid the scandal.
Notaro, who plays helicopter pilot Marianne Peters in the film, said in April she was taken aback by the response from the first trailer, which resulted in her trending as “Sexy AF.”
A guest on The Tonight Show, the comic-actress said then, “So much has changed,Jimmy. It’s really been nuts around here since I was trending for being ‘sexy AF.’ I didn’t even know what ‘AF’ was, to be honest. My friends were texting me images of Twitter, like ‘You’re trending for being badass and sexy AF.’ And I was like, ‘What is that?’” (AF is social media shorthand for “as fuck.”)
In the Netflix film, Dave Beautista leads a cast that includes Notaro, Ana de la Reguera, Omari Hardwick, Hiroyuki Sanada, Huma S Qureshi, Garret Dillahunt, Raúl Castillo, Nora Arnezeder, Matthias Schweighöfer, Samantha Win and Rich Cetrone.
