Zack Snyder regains rights to ‘homoerotic, super violent’ ‘Blood and Ashes’

Originally conceived as a follow-up to ‘300: Rise of an Empire’, the Greek war epic centres on the relationship between Alexander the Great and his general Haphaestion

Filmmaker Zack Snyder has regained the rights to Blood and Ashes, an epic he initially wrote as a sequel to his successful 300 movies.

According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, Blood and Ashes, in its current form, is shaped as a ‘gay love story’ and an ‘ancient Greek war epic’ centred on the relationship between Alexander the Great and his general and dear friend Hephaestion.

Snyder’s comic book adaptation 300 (2006) and its follow-up 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) are set during the Greco-Persian Wars in the 5th Century BC, over 100 years before Alexander’s birth and reign.

Snyder had partially scripted Blood and Ashes while filming his Netflix zombie thriller Army of the Dead (2019), the report states. The project was initially championed by Courtenay Valenti, then an executive but now the President of production and development at Warner Bros. However, following Snyder’s mid-production departure from Justice League, and given the tricky subject matter, it was iced by the studio.

Now, Snyder and his producer wife Deborah Snyder have bought the rights back to Blood and Ashes from Warner Bros.

“We got the rights back so we can make if we want it,” Snyder was quoted as saying by The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t know what the marketplace is for an incredibly homoerotic, super violent, super sexual movie. But maybe it’s perfect.”

Snyder’s new film, a sci-fi opera titled Rebel Moon, is set to release in two parts on Netflix. Part One: A Child of Fire drops on the platform on December 22 after a limited theatrical release in the US.