Zack Snyder revealed at the start of this year that his dystopian space opera Rebel Moon will be released in two parts on Netflix. That number now appears to have doubled, with the filmmaker wanting to drop two separate cuts for each film — that makes four films total. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Snyder talked about how one version will be more family-friendly — “that anyone can enjoy and watch,” while an explicit cut meant strictly for adults will be released at a later date. The first Rebel Moon movie drops December 22 on Netflix, with no release details for the unadulterated version.
“I think for fans of mine and people who are ready to take a deeper, harder dive, that’ll be fun for them,” Snyder said in the interview, who’s had a history of releasing multiple cuts for his movies. While 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice might have arguably been a little dark for the child audience, the depiction of bloody elements and Batman’s (Ben Affleck) raw violence were upped in the R-rated version, which was released on home media. For now, Rebel Moon’s second part does not have a concrete release window, though Snyder hopes it closely follows the heels of the first one. Snyder’s last collaboration with Netflix resulted in Army of the Dead, a zombie heist film, which was criticised for its one-note characters, a lengthy 148-minute runtime, and some stagnant dead pixels on the final cut.
Snyder’s penchant for long runtimes seems to have posed an issue for Rebel Moon as well, ultimately leading to its division into two parts. As per his wife and longtime producing partner Deborah Snyder, the script turned out to be 172 pages long, with each page representing a minute on screen, resulting in an epic that would run for nearly three hours. Netflix film chairman Scott Stuber disputed this, claiming that two-hour-long movies generally perform well on the platform “for some reason,” despite people being more than willing to binge-watch an entire eight-episode series. “If you ask me to make this less than two hours, I’m going to lose all the character,” Deborah describes Zack’s response. “You won’t care about these people. It’s a character story about how people can change, and redemption, and what are you willing to fight for…” And so, both parties settled for Rebel Moon being a two-part affair.
Rebel Moon is a grand space adventure centring around an enigmatic young woman Kora (Sofia Boutella), who resides in a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy. As the oppressive Regent Balisarius slowly tightens his oppressive rule, dispatching armies to invade, she sets out on a mission to seek out warriors from nearby planets to help take a stand and liberate the colony. If the premise sounds similar to a Star Wars movie, that’s because Snyder originally conceived it as that, albeit it never got produced, leading to a refashion into an original IP. It also stars Charlie Hunnam (The Gentlemen), Djimon Hounsou (Shazam!), Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League), and Jena Malone (Nocturnal Animals).
The first Rebel Moon film drops December 22 on Netflix. As mentioned before, this would be the cleaner, family-friendly version.
