Zack Snyder has never been shy about the fact that his upcoming Netflix dyad Rebel Moon began life as a pitch for a Star Wars movie, and all things considered, leaning into that fact and being upfront about it is the smartest thing Snyder is doing with the promotion for the movies. It all sounds Star Wars as hell, so if he really tried to pull this over on people, acting like it was just a wholly unique sci-fi story inspired by Seven Samurai with space-fascists and space-hermits and glowing swords, even the Snyder Cut loyalists might have paused for at least one second.
But no, he’s openly acknowledging that it was originally meant to be a Star Wars movie, telling Empire recently that, for Lucasfilm, it would’ve been “a big ask” anyway. His pitch was that it would take place in the Star Wars universe but would have absolutely nothing to do with any established characters and would be R-rated, and he says the further he got into envisioning his story, he realized that the Star Wars version of it “was probably never going to be” what he wanted.
So it’s now definitely not a Star Wars movie, it’s just another sci-fi thing inspired by Akira Kurosawa about someone living on the outskirts of the galaxy who has to put a team together to fight evil space villains, also there’s a mercenary pilot with a junk spaceship, an ancient religious order, a “world destroyer” spaceship, and it’s called Rebel Moon—with those two words being the first choice for when you want to insinuate Star Wars without literally being Star Wars. And that’s all fine, because oh my god he admit it.
Rebel Moon is coming to Netflix on December 22 with a family friendly cut that can be enjoyed by anyone (in theory), but at a later point there will be a “harder-edged” version “strictly for adults.” (Hey, there are more canonical virgin births in Star Wars than there are sex scenes, if you count cloning, so he deserves some originality points there.)
