Little did he know all the memes it would spawn.

300 was the film that really launched the careers of director Zack Snyder, actor Gerard Butler, and millions of memes, most of them involving the phrase ‘This. Is. SPARTAAAAA!!!’. In 2007, it was everywhere.

But, looking back on the visually striking swords-and-sandals movie, Butler admitted that he wasn’t all too confident at times that it would be any good.

“There were times you would walk around in your red cape and little leather underpants,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, “and someone would point at nothing and say, ‘Look! A burning village!’ And I remember going, ‘Oh my God. This movie’s going to suck.’

WARNER BROS.

“When I first saw the final product, I was with 13 of my representatives and friends, and our jaws were dropping. It was like, ‘Look at what Zack did!’ I can’t speak highly enough about him. As a director, as a creative, as a kind, excited, passionate guy.”

The actor described his first meeting with Snyder — which involved the director excitedly jumping up and down at Butler’s ‘Sparta walk’ — as “like a whirlwind”, stating: “I came in like a force of nature, but I was met with an equal force of nature… We bonded from the start.”

The director went on to adapt further comics and graphic novels for the screen, and recently released Zack Snyder’s Justice League, his original vision for the DC team-up movie after a hodgepodge cinematic release and relentless fan campaigning that, at times, got a bit nasty.

GEORGE PIMENTEL//GETTY IMAGES

Despite the success of the new cut, Warner Bros has stated that it won’t be pursuing new DC films with Snyder, nor create a director’s cut for Suicide Squad, which had a similarly tumultuous production.

300 had a sequel in 2014 called Rise of an Empire which didn’t make