Zack Snyder Wanted Both Rebel Movies to Release a Month Apart

The first Rebel Moon is still fresh enough in the public consciousness that there are endcaps filled with toys and snacks at Walmart, but the second movie -- Rebel Moon: Part 2 -- The Scargiver -- is still only about a month from coming out. that narrow window would actually have been much narrower, if filmmaker Zack Snyder had his way. In a new interview, Snyder confessed that he liked the idea of dropping the two installments just a month apart, presumably allowing the hype from the first movie to carry through to the second and minimize the amount of extra press he and the cast needed to do.

With the second movie just around the corner, Snyder has been talking about the possibility of expanding his Star Wars-like universe with more installments down the line. Rebel Moon has already spawned comics, toys, and a video game in its handful of months on the market, so it would not be surprising to see Netflix buy in.

"My initial idea was to actually have them come out closer together, closer than Netflix did," Snyder told SFX magazine in the latest issue. "I wanted them out, like, a month apart, because I just felt like the idea was to strike while the iron is still hot, when more people remember [the first film], you know?" 

"It's really two parts of the same story we're telling in these two movies," added Deborah Snyder, his wife and producing partner. "It wasn't realistic to put a four-hour movie on [Netflix], but to really give these characters their due, to tell the story, to have the action and have it be compelling, we needed that time. They're not sequels, they're parts, and that's intentional. They're meant to work together."

Rebel Moon 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 with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them take a stand the Tyrant.

Eric Newman, who produced Snyder's take on Dawn of the Dead in 2004, will produce this film, too. Ironically, Snyder's Dawn of the Dead was written by James Gunn, whose Guardians of the Galaxy generated dozens of think-pieces linking him to, and eventually asking him about, new Star Wars that might be in his future. For Gunn, the idea didn't hold any appeal, as he said he would rather create stories from the ground up...which is kind of what Snyder is now doing.

Rebel Moon stars Sofia Boutella, Ray Fisher, Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Jena Malone, AnthonyHopkins, Ed Skrein, and more. It's Snyder's next big franchise following the success of his original zombie project Army of the Dead, also at Netflix.

Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire is now streaming on Netflix. Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver is coming on April 19.