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Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture.
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22 years later, Zack Snyder and James Gunn's 2004 movie shows the potential of the pair working together again in the DC Universe. The DCEU timeline giving way to the DC Universe appears to have been a move that has already paid off thanks to the success of 2025's Superman, but the decision is one that garnered some fan ire.
Much of this pushback revolved around a wish to see Zack Snyder's prior plans for the DCEU unfold, which naturally lead to questions around whether the director could potentially play a role in the DC Universe, which would allow Snyder to lean into his darker vision for the superhero genre since the DCU is set to feature R-rated films. Though the future in this regard is still uncertain, one movie provides a pretty good example of how this scenario could work.
2004's Dawn Of The Dead Is An Early Collab Between James Gunn & Zack Snyder Before Their Respective DC Movie Debuts
While James Gunn and Zack Snyder are currently primarily associated with very different eras of DC's movie empire for the majority of the general public, the pair have worked together in the past, leading to one of the most unique installments in both of the creatives' film history: namely, the 2004 remake of horror movie classic Dawn of the Dead.
Of course, this saw the two take on different roles with the project, as Zack Snyder served as the movie's director, and James Gunn was involved with the screenplay. However, the stylistic choices of both can be seen within the film as a result, especially when it comes to Gunn and Snyder's joint ability to make action pop in a way that has garnered them success in their other film works.
Dawn Of The Dead Shows A DCU Collaboration Between James Gunn & Zack Snyder Could Still Really Work
Much has happened in the years that have passed since 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake - in this case, most notably that Zack Snyder made several movies for the DCEU, before the franchise came to an end in order to allow DC to reboot its film world into the DC Universe timeline, which has James Gunn at its helm as co-CEO alongside Peter Safran.
Given just how different Snyder and Gunn's time at the helm for DC have appeared to be, it's not surprising that it has seemed to some as though the two would be on entirely different levels in a way that would make Snyder appearing to make a DC Universe movie alongside James Gunn effectively impossible - especially given how different Snyder's Man of Steel and James Gunn's Superman are as films.
However, 2004's Dawn of the Dead paints a very different picture. Not only does it underline that Snyder and Gunn have a working history that would theoretically allow them to collaborate well in a future installment, Dawn of the Dead's success and positive critical reception shows the potential such an endeavor could hold in a more direct sense for the DC Universe.
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