Every filmmaker has their dream project that languishes in development for many years – from Guillermo del Toro’s “At the Mountains of Madness” to Stanley Kubrick’s “Napoleon”
For Zack Snyder, that project is an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s politically charged 1943 novel “The Fountainhead” which follows an iconoclastic architect named Howard Roark who struggles to pursue his creative vision and overcome critics and colleagues who doubt and undermine him.
The story is infamous for not only a scene in which Roark rapes the female lead, but as a precursor to Rand’s famous and contentious objectivist philosophy which puts ruthless individualism above any kind of collectivism. This work though avoids the more political and economic implications of her philosophy which her signature novel “Atlas Shrugged” tackled more directly.
In a new interview with the Life is Short with Justin Long podcast (via The Playlist) to promote “Army of the Dead,” Snyder says that while he’s still very keen to make it, ‘Fountainhead’ won’t be his next project.
Why? Not because of a busy schedule, rather because the world isn’t ready for it yet even as his take on the material is less about its broader political leanings and more about the compromise that anyone pursuing an ambitious creative project has to make:
“It’s a book that is so politically charged that we need a more liberal government to do ‘The Fountainhead’ so that everyone won’t freak out or something.
To me, it’s like, if you’re a filmmaker, you sort of understand if you’re looking at it from that lens, building a building (the subject of ‘The Fountainhead’) and making a movie are very similar.
You’re making little compromises constantly. Maybe one story less, and it’ll be very good. Does it really need all those fancy window frames? Maybe just make the windows. You wanted a mansion, and you end up with something that sort of looks like a house.
For me, that’s always what ‘The Fountainhead’ was about. For a lot of people, it’s a big political thing, but for me, it’s not so much about that.”
Next on Snyder’s list is an anime-style web series inspired by Norse mythology for Netflix along with producing the “Army of the Dead” prequel film “Army of Thieves” which has already filmed.
