Zack Snyder may not have been able to bring his DC "Snyderverse" to screens as intended, but the writer/director is certainly not going to be stopped in his tracks when it comes to his Army of the Dead franchise, which he has revealed will have a sequel under the title of Planet of the Dead. A Snyder-penned prequel movie, Army of Thieves is currently awaiting its Netflix premiere this Friday, but it seems like Snyder isn't hanging around to gauge reactions to the movie before pressing on with his newest installment, and has been teasing the return of one character in particular.

Zack Snyder is no stranger to zombie franchises, having taken on remaking George A. Romero's Dawn of The Dead as his directorial debut in 2004. From that point on, the Justice League helmer always wanted to bring Army of the Dead to screens, as his own "spiritual sequel" to the story. After 15 years, countless unsuccessful pitches and in no small part down to a combination of a boom in streaming platforms and his Justice League success, Snyder's Army of The Dead was finally acquired by Netflix, who bestowed a reported $90 million budget on the director to bring his vision to life. Having taken that opportunity and delivered a huge hit for the streamer, it was only a matter of time before talk of a sequel came about.

While the movie focuses on the story of a group of mercenaries attempting to retrieve $200 million from a vault in a zombie-filled Las Vegas before the city is taken out by a nuclear missile sent by the government to take out the undead hoard, the prequel, Army of Thieves, takes place six years earlier and follows safe-cracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighofer), showing how he developed his talents in the first stages of the zombie outbreak, which he would go on to put to effect in Army of The Dead. While the prequel was described by Deborah Snyder as "the Italian Job in a world where zombies exist", Schweighofer, who also directs the movie, said that it focuses more on the heist part and isn't categorically a zombie movie.

Speaking to Inverse about new sequel, Planet of the Dead, it seems obvious that Zack Snyder is returning to the all-out zombie apocalypse that was seen in Army of the Dead, and he teased the return of Schweightofer's Dieter as the constant between the trilogy.

Discussing the character's history and future, Snyder said, "Clearly, he's used his money to open a locksmith shop wherever he is - Barstow or San Bernandino. I don't know that he's done a ton other than [accrue] a clientele. He certainly has a lot of confidence in his ability to [install] locks on their back porches. But the real adventure would be to see what happened to him when that safe door closed. Did he get killed by Zeus or not? What happened? We don't see him die on camera, and there's still some time left. I won't tell you what happens in Army of the Dead 2 - aka Planet of the Dead - but let's just say that there's a chance Dieter survives. And there's a chance that brush with death would have caused him to want to find a jailed Gwendoline."

He also spoke briefly about how Norse mythology is something that he deep-dived into during the production of Army of Darkness, and as well as currently working on an animated series on that very subject for Netflix, he also emphasized how the subject, along with Wagner's Ring Cycle, had a part to play in the movies.

"My friend Adam Forman is a huge Ring Cycle fanatic. We just talked it out; there was a time when we were like, "We should do our own Ring Cycle [in a] Norse mythology movie. One thing led to another, and then we were talking about the Gotterdammerung and it just ended up with the idea that Twilight of the Gods was a metaphor at the time for this kind of zombie apocalypse. "There are more Wagnerian endings coming for everybody." The characters, literally, were in their own Ragnarok. They're these potential God characters in this Army universe, and they don't realize that they're the ones destroying themselves. And so and as the Army universe goes forward, this all plays out even more. If we did another Army of the Dead, you'd see that there are more Wagnerian endings coming for everybody. Basically, Ragnarok is on the way."

Army of the Dead is currently streaming on Netflix, while Army of Thieves makes its debut on the platform this Friday. This story comes via Inverse.