Born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Zack Snyder was featured in British Communication Arts magazine as one of the most talented commercial directors in the country. He began his early artistic training by studying painting at the Heatherlies School in London, then went on to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Working as both director and cinematographer, Zack has won numerous awards for his commercial work, including two Clios. His Jeep "Frisbee" commercial received a Gold Lion Award at Cannes. He has traveled all over the world shooting spots for companies such as Audi, Budweiser, Subaru and Compuware. Snyder has also created dynamic portraits of sports icons such as Michael Jordan, Martina Navratilova and Troy Aikman for clients Nike and Reebok.
Zack made his feature film directorial debut with Dawn of the Dead (2004), starring Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames. His next film, 300 (2007) starring Gerard Butler, was done on a much bigger scale, with a $65,000,000 budget. It was a huge box office smash, bringing in over $210 million at the U.S. box office alone.
For his next project, Watchmen, Zack was given a budget of $100,000,000. A fan of the graphic novels himself, Zack put his heart and soul into the film, which starred Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson and Billy Crudup. His next project was the animated feature Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole 3D (2010), followed by the girl power fantasy Sucker Punch (2011).
He then directed the popular superhero film Man of Steel (2013), followed by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). He went on to write the story for anothjer DC film, Justice League (2017), which he also directed. He wrote the story for the hit film Wonder Woman (2017), and is scheduled to write the sequel film Justice League Part Two, which doesn't have a release date yet.
He wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for the zombie film Army of the Dead, which he also directed. Starring Dave Bautista and Omari Hardwick, the film is in post production, but doesn't yet have a release date.
Zack has two children with his wife, Deborah, and four children from his first marriage, to Denise Michelle Weber.