Emerald Fennell is celebrating her Oscar nominations with a high profile gig. Variety reports that the “Promising Young Woman” writer, director, and producer is set to tell another vigilante story with “Zatanna,” a film based on the DC Comics heroine. She’s penning the script for the project.
Hailing from Warner Bros.’ DC Films and Bad Robot Productions, the pic hasn’t been cast yet. It centers on Zatanna, a magician who is “considered one of the most powerful sorcerers in the DC universe.” The character hasn’t appeared in the film franchise yet.
“Wonder Woman” and its sequel, “Wonder Woman 1984,” are currently the only DC Films titles led by women protagonists.
Fennell, an actress whose credits include “The Crown” and “Call the Midwife,” made her feature directorial debut with “Promising Young Woman.” The Carey Mulligan-starrer tells the story of a former med student determined to teach predatory men a lesson.
The multi-hyphenate served as showrunner on Season 2 of “Killing Eve.”
Fennell is up Best Achievement in Directing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Motion Picture of the Year at the upcoming Oscars for “Promising Young Woman.” This marks the first year in Oscar history that two women are up for Best Director: Fennell is joined by “Nomadland’s” Chloé Zhao.
Asked about “Promising Young Woman” being labelled as a “#MeToo revenge movie,” Fennell told The Guardian, “There’s a need to politicize women’s work, to make it either a memoir or part of a movement. But the issues in this film have been going on for ever and I’ve been thinking about writing it for a long time. So I wanted to see if it was possible to make a very specific type of genre movie. It just so happened that this project is about something that we’re all familiar with, which can seem innocuous and mundane, but when you examine it in another way is incredibly sinister,” she explained.
Fennell just won the Original Screenplay honor at the Writers Guild Awards for “Promising Young Woman.”