For the record, my answer to the question posed in the headline is… No. The reason I’m asking this question is because a pair of articles over at The Guardian and MTV contemplate the possibility of such a scenario. Personally, I think Snyder is the right director to give the Superman franchise the kick in the pants it needs, a jolt of energy it’s been missing… that is, as long as he can tone down the number of slo-mo shots and simmer a bit on the in-movie music video sequences. You know, go back to the days of Dawn of the Dead.
Ben Child at The Guardian is certainly the harshest on Snyder, opening his article saying, “Can one film ruin a career? Maybe it can, if that film is Sucker Punch.” He then adds, “Speculation has been rife this week that Zack Snyder might find himself out of the Superman hotseat due to the critical drubbing and poor US box-office bow for his salacious new action fantasy.”
Of course, Child is just dumping on Snyder as he then points to the MTV article saying a “number of critics” are betting Snyder will be dumped when in actuality MTV only talked to three people, only one of which really seems to think there’s even the slightest chance Snyder gets the boot.
“Next month would be the moment when Snyder ‘decides to do a more personal project,’ if he was being given the heave-ho,” David Poland of Movie City News told MTV.
“[I]t’s more about the bosses second-guessing. Will the noise level turn [CEO] Jeff Bewkes’ head?” Poland added. “Could another Superman flop — meaning just $400 million worldwide, hit numbers for most films — change how Jeff Robinov is seen inside the company? … I do believe that [Snyder] is Robinov’s guy and that Robinov’s career is on the line here.”
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Much of the MTV article then turns to producer and Superman: Man of Steel “godfather” Christopher Nolan. Jeff Bock at Exhibitor Relations tells MTV, “[Warner Bros.] needed Nolan in a godfather capacity, and Snyder to up the hip quotient. Snyder knows how to create a dynamic spectacle on the silver screen, as he has shown with 300 and Dawn of the Dead, and with Nolan guiding the story process, Superman may just be the next big thing — again.”
The reason this is even a topic of conversation is because Snyder’s Watchmen slightly underperformed and Sucker Punch took a critical drubbing, the latter of which was pretty much the first time Snyder was given total and complete control. Thing is, that won’t be happening with Superman as Bock points out. The collaboration between Snyder and Nolan could result in a reigning in of Snyder’s more destructive tendencies while letting his visual eye bring some life to the Man of Steel we haven’t seen before.
