Zack Snyder's New Movie Started Out as a Star Wars Spinoff

Earlier today, news broke that Zack Snyder's next film will be a science fiction movie for Netflix. Titled Rebel Moon, the title has the vague feeling some Western movie influences -- and when you have a space Western, people are going to draw comparisons to Star Wars. That's often a reductive way of looking at things, but in the case of Snyder's movie, it seems it's actually...accurate. The filmmaker, who has said in the past that he would love to do a Star Wars movie someday, revealed as part of the Netflix announcement that, yes, this began its life as a potential pitch for a Star Wars spinoff.

Like Star Wars, Snyder's sci-fi epic will be influenced by legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. That's something that Snyder has talked about a lot over the years, and it's worth noting that this is not a recent pitch that failed to move forward after Snyder's DC films, or something similar. Rather, this is something he pitched about a decade ago, which never went forward in any meaningful way.

It seems likely that this film is the one that spawned rumors in 2012, when Snyder was reported to be working on a Star Wars spinoff movie shortly after the Disney acquisition. Of course, he denied that almost immediately -- for an obvious reason: according to The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder envisioned his film as a darker, more mature take on the brand. That's obviously not where Disney saw things going.

"This is me growing up as an Akira Kurosawa fan, a Star Wars fan," Snyder said. "It's my love of sci-fi and a giant adventure. My hope is that this also becomes a massive IP and a universe that can be built out."

It's easy to see this as an extension of the Army of the Dead concept, where Snyder took something he was interested in and, rather than trying to get the rights to do something in-universe, simply made the Zack Snyder version instead.

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.