Vulture are reporting that Warner Bros. decided to offer Zack Snyder Superman: Man of Steel because their script penned by David Goyer was rushed,
and still a bit of a mess, and that Warner Bros. needed a director who won’t
spend months or years trying to get it just right [i.e Darren Aronofsky].
The studios
has a 2011 deadline to have the movie in production or they’ll be subject to
potential lawsuits by the heirs of the superhero’s creators. Vulture state that Snyder was not Warner’s first
choice to helm the new Superman, but that a competent director needed to be hired
imminently. Snyder has reportedly confided privately to agency sources that the
current Superman script needs work, but clearly Warner Bros. believes he
can get it done faster than Aronofsky.
Four years ago Goyer told slashfilm that he doesn’t think he’d
“ever be good to write Superman because it is the opposite… [the interviewer
says “he’s angst free”] Yeah. And I wouldn’t know the angle because I’m so
angst ridden so I wouldn’t know what to do with a character like that.”
Superman Producer Christopher Nolan
has since said that Goyer had figured out “how you approach Superman”
“..What
it is, while David Goyer and myself were putting together the story for another
Batman film a few years ago, you know thrashing out where we might move on from
the Dark Knight, we got stuck. We were just sitting there idly chatting and he
said ”by the way, I think I know how you approach Superman”.. and he told me his
take on it. I thought it was really tremendous. It was the first time I’ve been
able to conceive of how you’d address Superman in a modern context I thought it
was a really exciting idea. What you have to remember about Batman and Superman
is that what makes them the best superhero characters there are, the most
beloved after all this time, is the essence of who they were when they were
created, when they were first developed. You can’t move too far away from that.”
“It’s early yet, but I can
tell you that what David and Chris have done with the story so far definitely
has given me a great insight into a way to make him feel modern. I’ve always
felt he was kind of awesome.”