Zack Snyder is finally making the movie he’s been chasing since 2011. No, it’s not Rebel Moon – Part Three (although he’s still teasing that too). It’s The Last Photograph, a Colombia-set kidnapping thriller that officially starts filming this month. After years of false starts, at one point in 2016 it was supposed to star Christian Bale and Sean Penn, Snyder has his cast, his crew, and even Hans Zimmer on board to handle the score.
The film stars Stuart Martin (Rebel Moon, Army of Thieves, In Flight) and Fra Fee (Hawkeye, Prime Target). Production will run through November with locations in Colombia, Iceland, and Los Angeles. Snyder is producing with Deborah Snyder, Wesley Coller, and Gianni Nunnari, while Kurt Johnstad (300, Rebel Moon) wrote the screenplay based on a story from Snyder himself.
So what’s it about? Martin plays a former DEA operative whose niece and nephew are kidnapped in the South American mountains after their diplomat parents are murdered. Teaming up with a washed-up war photographer, the only witness to the crime, he’s forced to confront his past as the rescue mission slowly blurs the line between reality and the surreal.
Snyder has called it “a meditation on life and death,” something he says comes from his own personal experiences. “The idea of taking camera in hand and simply making a movie in an intimate way is very appealing to me,” Snyder told Deadline. “The Last Photograph is a meditation of life and death, embodying some of the trials that I have experienced in my own life and the exploration of those ideas through image making.”
If that sounds very un-Snyder, you’re not wrong. This is the same filmmaker who’s spent the last decade blowing things up in slow motion. Part One of Rebel Moon scored a painful 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, Part Two dropped to 16%, and the tie-in mobile game Rebel Moon: Blood Line didn’t even break Netflix’s Top 15 most-played list. For comparison, even World of Peppa Pig managed to chart. Yikes!
Snyder himself admitted earlier this year that he wanted to scale back. Speaking to Reel Blend in July, he said: “I’m trying to do a small movie right now. I’m not going to say what it is, but I was, like, can I just do a movie without any visual effects in it for like five minutes? Then, I’ll go back to the insanity […] I’m supposed to be writing this movie and that’s kind of what I want to do.”
For Snyder, The Last Photograph marks the first time he’s making something “smaller” since his 2004 debut, Dawn of the Dead. Of course, a DEA thriller with kidnappings, murders, and war photographers doesn’t exactly scream minimalist, but compared to space princesses with laser swords, it’s practically mumblecore.
The bigger question is who’s going to release it. Right now, The Last Photograph doesn’t have a studio attached. Given Snyder’s recent run with Netflix, the absence is already raising eyebrows. Maybe that’s for the best. Without digital filters that make his movies look like they were shot through soda bottles, and with Hans Zimmer’s score guiding the tone, Snyder might finally deliver the grounded film he’s epic visuals desperately need.
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