Are you sad Memorial Day Weekend is over? As am I.
For those who may have looked at their phone while the hot sun started to set, BBQ grill cooling in the backyard while you popped a button on your shorts, letting that belly just sort of hang out as digestion kicks in, you may have noticed some Twitter hubbub about Zack Snyder "confirming" he's adapting The Fountainhead next.
Now, before you go tossing those burnt hockey pucks you called "burgers" from your guts into the nearest toilet whilst imagining such a cinematic travesty, remember that Snyder has been chatting up a trip to the Objectivist well for two years.
BMD had it back in 2016, before production had even started on Justice League, with Snyder saying:
"I've always felt like The Fountainhead was such a thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something. Warner Bros. owns [Ayn Rand’s] script and I’ve just been working on that a little bit."
So, you're probably asking yourself: why did this come up yesterday? Well, Snyder took to his social media platform of choice, Vero (I know, right?), and answered a fan who asked what his next project would be:
Of course, every blog on the 'Net started running with this as Snyder "confirming" that The Fountainhead was next for him, which is great, but who's making this fucking movie? Deadline postulated:
"Snyder and his Cruel & Unusual Films have a deal on the Warner Bros lot where he has made all of his feature films since his debut, 2004’s Dawn of the Dead at Universal. It’s possible that this could be made outside Warners, however. Corporate sibling HBO for example was in talks with Snyder a few years ago about a TV version of Watchmen, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, which he adapted into a 2009 film. Those talks ended, however, and now Damon Lindelof is developing the project."
But even that's pure assumption. Look, my point here is that nothing is "confirmed" until a studio comes out and says "we're attached to this", and casting/crew assemblage have begun. Until then, this is just Snyder saying the same goddamn thing he spit out a couple of years ago.
Futhermore, which studio would be suicidal enough to make a big budget version of The Fountainhead in the Age of Trump? For Snyder - a longtime self-proclaimed Objectivist who adheres to the 'rational self-interest' train of thought - it actually makes sense as a passion project. Yet anyone who actually finances this would be failing to read the current political climate in a seriously upsetting way. Let's not forget that The Fountainhead is about a self-absorbed white dude architect, who forsakes all other worldviews outside of his own, rapes a woman into loving him, is a giant dick to everyone who surrounds him, and then blows up a building because it wasn't built to his vision.
I mean, if you made this into a tongue-in-cheek satire, it'd basically be a giant metaphor for Trump's existence. But we know that Snyder's already drinking from Rand's punchbowl of crazy, so it'll probably be a picture slavishly devoted to the author's original text.
To be continued, but probably not. If anyone ends up tossing money at this project, I'll boil and eat my old shoes for breakfast.