The release of 300 put Zack Snyder on the mainstream consciousness map and a sequel of some sort was hoped. The spinoff of it, originally titled Xerxes, has been bandied about for awhile but things haven’t really progressed much since Snyder is off on Superman: Man of Steel and unable to really participate in the feature. We also learned that Guy Ritchie has passed on it. Warner Bros. isn’t going to leave this money potential just sitting around though and according to Deadline, they’ve now formally renamed it to 300: Battle of Artemisia in order to market it easily so people knows its origins and they’re talking about Noam Murro, director of Smart People, and Jaume Collet-Serra (director of Unknown) as the top of the list candidates to helm the piece. Murro has some attention these days as he’s in the process of developing the next Die Hard feature, so that puts him in an action frame of mind, while Collet-Serra has earned some reputation for his work on Unknown but is also involved in the Dracula feature, Harker.
