Zack Snyder is currently in post-production on the highly anticipated DC Comics superhero team-up movie Justice League. Though that film's release date is a little less than a year away, its follow-up film, which had previously been set for a mid-2019 release, is now being delayed so that Ben Affleck's standalone Batman film can nab a spot on the schedule. Now, Snyder has a window available for another project outside of the Warner Bros. DCEU.

THR reports that Snyder will not move on to direct Justice League: Part Two next as was originally intended, at least not right away. His next film will be the long-in-development war thriller The Last Photograph. We last reported on this film back in 2011, but Snyder has been shopping it since the mid-2000s following his success on 300. The rights on that deal have lapsed, but Gianni Nunnari’s Hollywood Gang is currently negotiating a new one.

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Image via Zack Snyder

The story of the relatively small-scale picture "centers on a war correspondent in Afghanistan who is the only one to survive an attack on a group of Americans. When a special ops soldier in search of a family member shows up, the two team up, with the correspondent hoping to score the story of his life." Snyder dreamed up the story while colleague Kurt Johnstad wrote the script; expect that to be dusted off and freshened up. Though Christian Bale and Sean Penn were previously attached to star, the project is currently without a cast. The plan is to repackage The Last Photograph and shop it to Warner Bros. where Zack and Deborah Snyder have a first-look deal under their production banner, Cruel and Unusual Films. The plan is to shoot in late 2017.

Earlier this year, leading up to the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder mentioned The Last Photograph when answering a question about non-superhero movies he was currently working on:

“We have The Last Photograph that I’ve been working on for a long time. It’s a small, sort of weird project about a war photogra­pher in Afghanistan. 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.”

So while The Last Photograph will be Snyder's next project once he wraps on Justice League and finishes the promotional run-up to its November 17, 2017 release, we're not sure when either the standalone Batman movie will debut, nor when Justice League: Part Two will follow suit. My money's on The Batman taking Justice League: Part Two's June 14, 2019 slot, but time will tell. Keep an eye out here for more news as it becomes available.

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.

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