300 was a highly stylized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae adapted from the comic by Frank Miller, and director Zack Snyder recently spoke about the movie on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Although historians have found plenty of evidence of homosexuality in Ancient Greece, 300 doesn’t really touch upon it. When asked if he ever thought “about putting a bunch of gay stuff in there,” Snyder replied that he was adapting a comic, not real history. However, the director did say that he’s been talking about a 300 series which would include more of those elements.
“It’s Frank’s book. I made what Frank wrote,” Snyder said. “And we’ve been talking about doing a series where I really wanted to introduce those concepts a lot more because I just feel like it’s important. If we go forward and do more in the ‘300’ universe, I would want to bring that part in. I think it just shakes it up again. Like, ‘What?!’ Right when you thought you knew how to feel, I’m going to make you feel another way.“
Snyder continued, “As we go forward, I would love to just kind of stress…Look, ‘300’ in some ways is one of the gayest movies ever made. It is incredibly male-centric, male-obsessed. You really feel very strong male energy from that movie, even though Gorgo (Lena Headey) is an incredibly strong female character. Maybe that was just me understanding, doing the research and understanding Spartan culture that that energy was in there. It was important to make sure there was a visceral sexuality to the way the men actually interacted. Regardless of whether you acknowledge it, it’s there.“
The director had once planned on returning to the 300 universe with one final movie, but Warner Bros. passed on the script. The project had evolved into a love story about the relationship between Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, and Snyder actually regained the rights to the script last year. “I just couldn’t really get my teeth into it,” Snyder said in 2021. “Over the pandemic, I had a deal with Warner Brothers and I wrote what was essentially going to be the final chapter in ‘300.’ But when I sat down to write it I actually wrote a different movie. I was writing this thing about Alexander the Great, and it just turned into a movie about the relationship between Hephaestion and Alexander. It turned out to be a love story. So it really didn’t fit in as the third movie.“
It doesn’t sound like the 300 series is being talked about on any serious level, but you never know what might happen.
