There cannot be too many film-makers who have spent quite so long being told that their version of a superhero universe is over, as Zack Snyder has. His Batman is gone, his Superman has been dismantled and the studio that once handed him the keys to DC is now run by James Gunn and Peter Safran, two men whose first order of business was to build something completely different. And yet here he is, determined not to give up, telling anyone who will listen about his proposal to bring the classic Frank Miller graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns to multiplexes.
In an interview with Variety to promote his forthcoming film The Last Photograph, Snyder returned to an idea he has been talking about for years: adapting Miller’s famously grim 1986 vision of an ageing Batman coming out of retirement in a dystopian Gotham. “The reason why it’s The Dark Knight Returns, if anyone would ever let me do it outside of the DC Universe since it’s a novel that just happens to have superheroes in it, is if I could do Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, those two books next to each other, to me, represent the complete cycle of the superhero comic book medium,” the film-maker said.
