Zack Snyder Reveals The Dark Side Of The Rebel Moon

That's no moon, it's a rebel moon. Specifically, it's Zack Snyder's "Rebel Moon," a two-part sci-fi film epic that somewhat infamously began as a "Star Wars" movie that the "300" director and Snyderverse architect pitched to Lucasfilm shortly before Disney bought the studio all the way back in 2012.

Sofia Boutella ("The Mummy") stars in "Rebel Moon" as Kora, a mysterious outsider who rallies the people of the moon Veldt to fight back against the oppressive rulers of the nearby Mother World who have long exploited them for their own personal gain. Gisaku the village elder ... I mean Flik the ant ... I mean Kora, who's actually a former member of the Mother World's deadly army (the Imperials Imperium), seeks to redeem herself for her past actions by assembling a team of seven warriors from across the galaxy to aid the villagers of Veldt. You could perhaps say these warriors are rather magnificent and almost samurai-like. Okay, I'll stop now.

Joining Boutella in the "Rebel Moon" cast are Charlie Hunnam ("Pacific Rim") and Michiel Huisman ("Game of Thrones") as the cynical starship pilot and wide-eyed farmboy Han and Luke Kai and Gunnar (that was the last one, I promise!), as well as Staz Nair ("Supergirl") as the blacksmith Tarak; Ray Fisher ("Justice League") and Cleopatra Coleman ("Infinity Pool") as the renegade siblings Darrian and Devra Bloodaxe; Jena Malone (the "Hunger Games" films) as a part-spider warrior named Harmada; Anthony Hopkins as the voice of the last member of an ancient race of robotic knights known as Jimmy; and newcomer E. Duffy as Millius, one of the last survivors of a small farming village that was destroyed after cooperating with the Mother World.

For more, check out the following featurette that Netflix premiered as part of its annual TUDUM event.

All jokes about the obvious influences on "Rebel Moon" aside, it's genuinely refreshing these days to see a filmmaker getting a big budget to realize their own original gonzo creative vision on a massive canvas, as opposed to merely rebooting an established IP. During an interview with Vanity Fair, Zack Snyder revealed he initially came up with the idea for the project when he was just a wee film student in the 1980s, long before he pitched it to Lucasfilm as a potential "Star Wars" movie. His wife and producing partner, Deborah Snyder, only further played up the parallels between "Rebel Moon" and other sci-fi and fantasy properties, stating:

"It has a bit of 'Star Wars.' It has a bit of everything. It's a little bit like 'Lord of the Rings,' a little bit 'Game of Thrones' with the palace intrigue. And it's really just a lot of what's in Zack's head."

Netflix is technically getting two big-budget epics for the price of one here. Zack Snyder had originally planned to release "Rebel Moon" as a single film but agreed to split up his 172-page script — which he co-penned with his "Army of the Dead" scribe Shay Hatten and "300" co-writer Kurt Johnstad — after Netflix requested the first movie be around two hours long. Snyder has also confirmed there will be two cuts of the films: one that's more PG-13-ish and the other that's intended for adults (read: delivers Snyder's particularly polarizing brand of edgelord genre filmmaking).

Will this be the project that finally allows Zack Snyder to fully realize his career-long ambition of matching the sheer go-for-brokeness of John Boorman's "Excalibur?" We'll see how our himbo auteur fares when the first "Rebel Moon" movie hits Netflix on December 22, 2023.