Zack Snyder Developing An Adaptation Of Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'

Slow-motion-loving director Zack Snyder has aspirations beyond making big explosions in blockbusters of little depth but lots of noise. For years he’s been attached to the Afghan war drama “The Last Photograph,” and more recently he’s talked about wanting to make a movie about George Washington in the style of “300“ (sheesh). But now, he’s reading books too, and getting ideas to turn them into movies.

Chatting with THR, he reveals he wants to tackle a book by libertarian/conservative fave Ayn Rand. “We have ‘The Last Photograph’ [developing] that I’ve been working on for a long time. It’s a small, sort of weird project about a war photographer in Afghanistan,” he said. “I have been working on ‘The Fountainhead.’ 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.”

Snyder tackling “The Fountainhead” kind of makes one’s head spin, but the book has been adapted before, by King Vidor in the 1949 picture starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. But no doubt, Snyder would put his lumbering, shrill brand on the material. Here’s the book synopsis:

Architect Howard Roark is as unyielding as the granite he blasts to build with. Defying the conventions of the world around him, he embraces a battle over two decades against a double-dealing crew of rivals who will stop at nothing to bring him down. These include, perhaps most troublesome of all, the ambitious Dominique Francon, who may just prove to be Roark’s equal. This epic story of money, power and a man’s struggle to succeed on his own terms is a paean to individualism and humanity’s creative potential. First published in 1943, The Fountainhead introduced millions to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism: an uncompromising defence of self-interest as the engine of progress, and a jubilant celebration of man’s creative potential.

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