Zack Snyder looked to Terry Gilliam’s director’s cut of “Brazil” when crafting the world of “Rebel Moon.”
Snyder confirmed during a recent “Rebel Moon” press preview Q&A (via Slash Film) that a director’s cut was already “part of the plan” with Netflix for the “Rebel Moon” release. The “Star Wars”-esque feature will debut in two parts, titled “A Child of Fire” and “The Scargiver,” respectively, this December and next April. Director’s cuts and featurettes will also reportedly be released on the streaming platform.
Snyder cited Gilliam’s 1985 sci-fi dark comedy starring Jonathan Pryce, Bob Hoskins, and Robert De Niro as part of the reason why he is intrigued by director’s cuts in general.
“I was like, ‘That’s cool. That makes it a lot easier than this,’” Snyder said of the approved director’s cut option. “Because it’s one of those things that I guess I was always inspired by movies like ‘Brazil,’ or there’s a great history of director’s cuts that are just cool. When I was in film school, I just always thought that was cool, that there was this other movie that you could discover.”
Snyder continued, “So for me, when you make a movie, you have a lot of voices in your own creative mind telling you what would be narratively just the strongest solution. And then you have this other tug on you — I do, anyway — that is like, ‘Well, what if there’s rabbit holes that are really amazing to go down and just kind of learn about different aspects of the characters?’”
He added, “I think it’s been the experience of my relationship to the fans of the movies that I’ve made is that they’ve always seen [the director’s cuts] as like, ‘OK, what’s that? What am I going to learn in there, in those eggs that come at Easter time? What will be those [references]?’”
Fans of Snyder’s DC universe films like “Batman V. Superman” were part of what pushed Warner Bros. to release the #SnyderCut of “Justice League” in 2021. Snyder previously revealed that Warner Bros. passed on “Rebel Moon” multiple times.
Snyder’s producing partner and wife Deborah Snyder addressed how “Rebel Moon” operates outside of the strict confines of IPs like “Star Wars” and the DCU.
“Once, it was a ‘Star Wars’ film, and I never wanted it to be,” Deborah Snyder said of the failed “Star Wars” movie idea that eventually became “Rebel Moon.”
She added, “I remember, I said to Zack, ‘I just feel like your hands are going to be tied so much in what that IP is,’ even though it kind of lived outside of it. So I was kind of happy when that fell apart, because I always felt like it was better. We learned so much with all our years working with the superheroes and creating those worlds, and to do something now that’s wholly original — we got to do a little bit of that in the world of zombies, and with Las Vegas, but to do something that is fantastical, we say it’s a science fantasy more than science fiction, and to take all those skills that Zack has been honing, and to do something in this space, just seemed really exciting.”
