Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon” is on Netflix now, and obviously, it’s a divisive film with a 22% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Our review wasn’t pretty blunt about it, too, calling it “lifeless and superficial,” but it’s still fascinating that Netflix went all in on it, and a sequel, “Rebel Moon: The Scargiver,” is coming in April 2024 (read our review here; check out our 2024 blockbuster preview here).
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There’s also a fascinating what-if to consider about the project, too, as the movie started out as a “Star Wars” pitch that Snyder made to Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy. And so, in a recent DGA Director’s Cut podcast about “Rebel Moon” and director Louis Leterrier as the guest filmmaking moderator, Snyder told the “Star Wars” pitch story, going further in-depth about it than he’s ever done before.
Snyder said he had a basic idea of “Rebel Moon” back in college, but it wasn’t until he was working on “Man Of Steel” with Christopher Nolan as a producer that he finally got confident enough in the idea to pitch it.
“We were working on the editorial of ‘Man of Steel,’ I said to Christoper Nolan, remember telling Chris in the edit, ‘I had this idea, I’m just gonna call Kathleen Kennedy, and I’m just gonna pitch her this ‘Star Wars’ movie I have an idea for,’ because
because at that time, that was before the Disney sale, it was after the prequels, ‘Star Wars’ was quiet, ‘Star Wars’ was in a quiet mode,” he explained.
It should be noted that Snyder sounds a little cocky in the retelling of it all, but a lot of it feels self-aware and self-effacing, considering how it all went.
“And I remember thinking, ‘They need me!’” he laughed, self-deprecatingly. “This is cool, I’m gonna fix ‘Star Wars!’ Also, because I had some issues with some of the [prequel] decisions—I’m not gonna say what it was, but I just felt like [Lucasfilm] had gone astray a little bit; I know that’s sacrilegious to say, but that was my feeling.”
How did the meeting go, Leterrier asked, having had his own conversations with Lucasfilm that didn’t go so well?
“Well, it went really well,” Snyder said, with a kind of “actually,” “At the time I pitched it and [Kathleen Kennedy said], ‘that sounds really cool,’ I remember saying something like, ‘Is there any way it could be rated R? Is that a thing?’ And she went, “Hmmmm, I’m not sure…” he said, pausing to reflect her audible doubt at the time. “’So you’re saying there’s a chance,’ and she said, ‘Well, let’s talk more and see how it evolves,’ and I was like, ‘OK!’”
Snyder laughed here, seemingly laughing at his own naiveite and delusions, something his wife and producer Deborah Snyder scolded him about later.
“So I left the meeting thinking, ‘They’re down for an R-rated movie for one, and it’s gonna be like some Jedi’s going nuts!” he recalled, trying to convey his confidence at the time. “So I was pretty up on the idea, and I remember I went home, and my wife, who is my producing partner, was like, ‘You’re crazy, they’re never gonna do this, you’re completely nuts and you’re delusional, because— at the time, I was working with ‘Superman’ as an IP and I was having a little bit of a, he’s a tough character to change, and I wasn’t trying to change him, but I was trying to push aspects of him around a little bit— and so she was like, ‘Do you know what ‘Star Wars’ is gonna be like? It’s gonna be a disaster for you.’”
Snyder admits to a second meeting, and Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) had even conceptual art for it as well, which made him even more optimistic they would be down with his R-rated “Star Wars” movie.
“I did have a second meeting where ILM had done all these paintings, reflecting what my idea would look like in the “Star Wars’ universe, and then I was [thinking], ‘See! This is cool!’”
A few days later, however, riding high on the meeting, everything changed when it was announced that Lucasfilm was sold to Disney, Snyder sounding slightly annoyed that they didn’t tell him.
“And then two days later, I read in the trades that they sold [Lucasfilm], and Disney now owns it, and I was like, ‘uh what? That’s weird; no one said anything about that; a head’s up would have been cool of some small amount,’” he remembered.
And then, from there, the idea basically got scrapped, his wife, however, telling him all it was for the best—perhaps foreshadowing what was going to come with DC and not being able to control the ideas of his own I.P. and studio problems.
“And then, of course, they were like, ‘Look, we love your idea, but we’re gonna go in a new.. we’re going to do something else,’” he recalled of Lucasfilm’s ultimate response. “And my wife was like, ‘See, this is the best thing that has ever happened to you. This is great news, you’re fine, plus when were you going to do that movie? Because you have like… you’re busy,’ So it just fell back a little bit, it disappeared for a while, I would still think about it, I would still talk to her about it, I would say, ‘What if.. this!” And [my wife] would say, ‘You’re still ranting about that space movie?’ But it was tenacious.”
Of course, “Rebel Moon” got made into a movie on Netflix, and while it hasn’t gone over so well with critics, he’s already shot the second movie, and it’s coming out soon, so there’s no backing out on it now. However, one does have to wonder: will “Star Wars” ever make an R-rated film? Doubtful, and two, will Snyder, given the frosty reception to “Rebel Moon,” go back to the “Army Of The Dead” franchise at Netflix instead? Time will tell. Listen to the whole podcast conversation below.
