Zack Snyder has big plans for Rebel Moon. Speaking with Empire magazine, the filmmaker says that he doesn’t really see a “bottom” for how far they can take the world of Rebel Moon and that the film could spawn additional films and even a television series and more beyond the two films already in the works for Netflix — Rebel Moon set to arrive on December 22nd while Rebel Moon Part 2 will follow.
“When I pitched it to Netflix, the scale was a thing they wanted,” Snyder said. “They were like, ‘Well, how big could it be? How many movies?’ That made me go, ‘Okay, if we really do this, we can sink our teeth pretty deep into this. We can’t really hit the bottom.’”
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The piece goes on to explain that Snyder had a 450-page “bible” for Rebel Moon as well as a timeline stretching before and after the two Netflix films. It’s enough for storytelling for a television series that would explore Fra Fee’s Balisarius as well as a third film that would see the story visit the real rebel moon.
“The rebel moon is not the moon that they’re on,” Snyder explained of the first two films. “The title was conceptual, but there’s a planet named Vanna and Vanna is the rebel moon. It’s not even in one shot of this movie!”
Zack Snyder Originally Pitched Rebel Moon to Lucasfilm
The expansive nature of Rebel Moon feels, in some ways, similar to the expansive nature of Star Wars and that’s not exactly a coincidence. Snyder recently told Vanity Fair that, at one point, he pitched Rebel Moon to Lucasfilm just before it was acquired by Disney, though it was always meant to be its own standalone story.
“I was in postproduction on Man of Steel,” Snyder explained. “I had heard there were rumblings about possibly doing another three [Star Wars] movies at some point. My take was that, if you just let me have the IP, I’ll make this cool movie, and I won’t get in the way of anything that you guys are doing.”
Snyder went on to explain that he met with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and then later with Disney’s then studio chief Alan Horn after Lucasfilm was acquired and while the reactions to the idea was promising, they all ultimately decided it wasn’t going to work out.
“I didn’t really have time to do a Star Wars movie,” Snyder said. “So, it kind of worked out.”
Rebel Moon, because it was original characters, ended up being easy to move away from Star Wars and ultimately ended up at Netflix and has changed quite a bit since it was pitched to Lucasfilm.
“The concept came from being at film school,” Snyder said. “I think I had a pitch class — what would be a cool idea for a movie? And I was like: ‘a defending-the-village space movie. Only afterward, I thought it would fit in the Star Wars universe. Then it went all the way back around. It’s been literally on the back burner for a long time. I don’t even know if the burner was on for a lot of that time.”
What is Rebel Moon About?
As the tagline of “war comes to every world” suggests, Rebel Moon will see exactly that. The film is set in a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy that finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius They dispatch a young woman, Kora, with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them take a stand against the Tyrant. In addition to Boutella, the film stars Charlie Hunnam, Ray Fisher, Djimon Hounsou, Jena Malone, Corey Stoll, Ed Skrein, Cleopatra Coleman, Fra Fee, Cary Elwes, and Anthony Hopkins.
Rebel Moon arrives on Netflix on December 22nd.
