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Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon is hitting Netflix in two parts – with directors' cuts to follow – but it was almost made as a TV show, thanks to the director's experience with his DC epic Justice League.
By the time Rebel Moon was being pitched as a TV show, Justice League had reached cinemas. Snyder left the project before its release and Joss Whedon took over reshoots, changing the plot and tone drastically. The situation was, by most accounts, unpleasant.
"Zack had come off the worst professional experience of his life," Eric Newman, speaking in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features Doctor Who on the cover, says of Justice League. Newman produced Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and is a co-producer on Rebel Moon.
Article continues belowThe result was the director feeling unsure whether he should re-enter the filmmaking space. "I knew what I had made with Justice League, but no one had seen it – it didn't really exist," he says, referring to the once mythological, now-real Snyder Cut. "Justice League is four hours long, and so the idea of making an eight-hour TV show didn't seem like that big of a deal. I felt like I can direct all eight episodes and make a House of the Dragon thing. I was pitching Game of Thrones in space. That's a pretty easy pitch, everyone pitches that, but I meant it. Post-Justice League, it did appeal to me, the idea of this complete world-building exercise where we just go on a deep dive into this universe that has no canon, and we're answering only to ourselves."
In other words, Rebel Moon would be Zack Snyder unleashed – unbound by the expectations of fandom, able to build a universe out of nothing – but everyone involved knew it had to be, at least to kickstart this fresh franchise, a movie.
"We felt like it would be best for the quality of the project," Deborah Snyder says. "We can go and do TV once we've established it, but because it didn't exist, we had the best shot of getting the money we needed by making it a film."
As for Zack's feelings about filmmaking, something miraculous happened during the pandemic: the Snyder Cut saw the light of day.
"In some ways, the Snyder Cut and his experience on Army of the Dead with Netflix, they conspired to make him feel more comfortable in the movie space again," Newman says. The result wasn't just one movie, but two.
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Rebel Moon releases on Netflix this December 22, with a limited theatrical release from December 15. The above is just a snippet from our interview with the Snyders, available in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Doctor Who on the cover and is available on newsstands from Friday, December 1. For even more from SFX, sign up for the newsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.
