Zack Snyder Dives Into Drama as His Passion Project Finally Gets an Important Production Update

Zack Snyder is stepping away from superheroes and epic sci-fi worlds for a very personal project. Later this month, the director will start filming The Last Photograph, a drama he first came up with in the mid-2000s. The story has been in development for years, but now it’s finally moving forward.

The film will star Stuart Martin and Fra Free, both of whom appeared in Snyder’s Rebel Moon movies. Unlike Snyder’s previous big-budget films, this is a smaller, indie-style project.

Snyder will produce the film with his wife and creative partner Deborah Snyder, along with Wesley Coller, under their Stone Quarry banner. Gianni Nunnari and his Hollywood Gang Productions company are also on board as producers.

The Last Photograph is a war drama that will be filmed in multiple countries, including Colombia, Iceland, and Los Angeles. Local production companies will help with filming in these locations. Executive producers include the Spanish company Mediaset España, working through Telecinco Cinema, as well as William Doyle and Jaguar Bite from Colombia. In Iceland, True North is handling production services. The project is also taking advantage of Colombia’s CINA incentive, which gives a 35 percent tax discount for audiovisual expenses in the country.

Snyder has also secured a talented group of composers for the project: Hans Zimmer, Steven Doar, and Omer Benyamin. The script was written by longtime Snyder collaborator Kurt Johnstad, who worked with him on 300 and Rebel Moon. The story comes from Snyder himself.

According to the producers, it follows an ex-DEA agent who returns to the South American mountains to find his missing niece and nephew after their diplomat parents are brutally killed. He enlists the help of a washed-up war photographer, the only witness to the murders. As they search for the children, the journey forces the ex-agent to confront his past and pushes both characters far from civilization, testing what they believe to be real.

The project has evolved over the past two decades. At one point, the story was set in Afghanistan and focused on a war correspondent surviving an attack on a group of Americans. In the early 2010s, Christian Bale and Sean Penn were attached to star. Snyder then paused the project to focus on his DC films.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder said, “The idea of taking camera in hand and simply making a movie in an intimate way is very appealing to me. The Last Photograph is a meditation of life and death, embodying some of the trials that I have experienced in my own life and the exploration of those ideas through image making.”

Snyder also has several other films in development, including an MMA action movie called Brawler and a thriller set around the LAPD.

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