The Xerxes movie has had a lot of ups and downs over the past few months without actually even entering production. Rumors of Guy Ritchie taking on this movie as director failed to come into fruition, but there is hope as the folks over at Deadline managed to uncover a shortlist of director.

Source: Deadline

The producers of the 300 spinoff known as Xerxes have retitled their film 300: Battle of Artemisia, and they have also narrowed their focus of potential directors to two: Noam Murro and Jaume Collet-Serra. The film, a spinoff to 300, is one that the film’s original director Zack Snyder was going to direct. That was until Warner Bros and producer Chris Nolan offered him Man of Steel, and Snyder and wife and producing partner Debra Snyder put Xerxes aside and moved on to rebooting the Superman franchise because Warner Bros needed it.

I’m still excited about the idea of seeing a 300 sequel and slightly disappointed that Zack won’t be directing this movie. I don’t know who these directors are. Nope, not a clue but here’s some info that was also shared:

As for those directors: Murro’s sole directing credit is the Sarah Jessica Parker-starrer Smart People for Miramax, but his calling card for big-scale movie making is his commercials work on campaigns that include the Halo video game. He’s a five-time DGA-nominated commercials director, won two Golden Lions at Cannes and last year signed a deal to develop to direct the next Die Hard film at 20th Century Fox. Collett-Serra directed the sleeper hit Unknown for Warner Bros, and he’s prepping to direct Red Circle for Working Title and StudioCanal. He’s also developing the vampire tale Harker with Appian Way at Warner Bros.

Halo commercials? Really? Thought those were all handled by Blomkamp. This is very re-assuring news and I’m looking forward to more information about this movie actually entering production but I have a funny feeling it may be a while. I’ll keep you guys posted.