Zack Snyder

Zack Snyder (born March 1, 1966, Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.) is an American filmmaker known for directing, writing, and producing highly stylized and visually striking superhero and action films, including the historical war epic 300 (2006), the gritty, dystopian superhero film Watchmen (2009), and the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) Superman origin story Man of Steel (2013).

Early life

Although he was born in Wisconsin, Snyder was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. His mother, Marsha Manley (née Reeves) Snyder, was a painter and photography teacher who nurtured his love of visual art. His father, Charles Edward Snyder, worked as an executive recruiter and shared his love of sports with his son. Zack Snyder began directing his own films as a child, progressing from stop-motion animation movies to films featuring his schoolmates. In a 2011 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he described his first stop-motion film project:

My mom bought me my Super 8 camera when I was 11, a Canon 1014XL-S. The first movie I ever shot was a stop action Star Wars movie with my Star Wars figures. I built an elaborate set, had the Millennium Falcon land, and they all got off and had a fight with Hammerhead and a few other guys. I scratched the lasers into the film. You took a paperclip and scraped the emulsion off and—pew, pew, pew—made lasers.

School was challenging for Snyder, who is dyslexic. After high school he studied painting at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London for a year and moved on to the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, from which he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film in 1989.

Career

Snyder started his career directing television commercials for clients such as BMW and Nike. He branched out to music videos in 1989, directing the video for “Love Is a Crime” by American heavy metal band Lizzy Borden. He went on to direct videos for musicians Peter Murphy, Morrissey, Soul Asylum, ZZ Top, and Rod Stewart. In 2004 he made his big-screen directorial debut with a remake of filmmaker George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie horror classic Dawn of the Dead. He followed up Dawn of the Dead by directing and contributing to the script for 300, a stylishly violent historical epic about the Battle of Thermopylae starring Gerard Butler as the Spartan king Leonidas. Snyder quickly gained a reputation for his aesthetic eye and cinematography, blending moody darkness with saturated color and ultraviolent action scenes. He first teamed up with DC Comics on the film Watchmen, an adaptation of author Alan Moore’s darkly mysterious superhero graphic novel of the same name.

In 2010 Snyder diverged from his big-budget action film trajectory with Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, an animated adventure film for children about warrior owls, based on a fantasy book series by author Kathryn Lasky. The following year he cowrote, produced, and directed the dark fantasy action film Sucker Punch, about an institutionalized young woman who retreats into a fantasy world. In 2013 Snyder helped launch the DCEU, directing the Superman origin story Man of Steel (2013), a reboot of the Superman film series. He followed Man of Steel with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), a film about the tension and eventual collaboration between DC’s two main superheroes. Warner Brothers was pleased with Snyder’s work and tasked him with helping shape the vision of the DCEU. He went on to serve as a producer or executive producer on the DCEU films Wonder Woman (2017), Aquaman (2018), Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), and The Suicide Squad (2021).

Following Batman v Superman, Snyder took on one of his most ambitious film projects, Justice League (2017), which brought together DC’s most popular superheroes into one epic film. During postproduction of Justice League, Snyder stepped away from the film after his daughter Autumn took her own life at age 20. Director Joss Whedon, who had helmed the first two Marvel Avengers films, was tapped to finish the movie. The final product received mixed reviews, leading to a popular Internet campaign to “release the Snyder cut,” which fans hoped would be a superior version of the film. Years later, Snyder created the highly anticipated director’s cut of the film for HBO, Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021). Snyder’s cut includes reshoots and reworked scenes, extending the original two-hour film into a four-hour epic.

Following his Justice League revamp, Snyder cowrote, produced, and directed the zombie action film, Army of the Dead (2021). For his next big project, Snyder directed and cowrote the screenplay for Netflix’s two-part science-fiction epic Rebel Moon, comprising Rebel Moon: Part One—A Child of Fire (2023) and Rebel Moon: Part Two—The Scargiver (scheduled to be released in 2024). Various spin-offs and tie-ins were already planned before the initial film’s release, intended to expand it into a vast universe of interconnected stories.

Snyder’s wife, Deborah Snyder, is a producer who has produced many of his films, including Watchmen, Sucker Punch, 300, Man of Steel, and Batman v Superman, among others. Together with partner Wesley Coller, the Snyders operate a production company called Stone Quarry Productions. In a 2016 interview with Bloomberg News, Deborah Snyder described her husband’s work ethic and constant creative energy:

He’s such a true artist. If you ever go to a restaurant where there’s parchment paper…he’s constantly drawing sketches of people. In between movies, he’s picking up his video camera and shooting things around the house. He can’t help himself.