Depending on your personal taste, the prospect of Rebel Moon unleashing the full fury of Zack Snyder as a filmmaker is either massively exciting or dread-inducing.
After all, very few directors of the modern age boast a following anywhere near as passionate and dedicated as the former architect of the DCU, but he’s also responsible for the three longest comic book adaptations of all-time thanks to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s Ultimate Edition, Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut, and HBO Max’s extended version of Justice League.
Mercifully – at least for his detractors – Rebel Moon is being split in two, with one feature nowhere near enough to contain everything Snyder is planning to bring to the table. It’s guaranteed to do massive viewership numbers, of that we can be entirely sure, but the tantalizing tease from screenwriter Shay Hatten in an interview with Collider is going to be interpreted in a couple of different ways depending on how you feel about the man and his merits as a creative mind.
“Rebel Moon is… I mean, it’s in the can. It’s in post-production right now. Zack [Snyder]is editing away, and I’ve seen bits and pieces of it. I’ve seen scenes here and there and a cut of the trailer. I haven’t seen the full movie myself yet, but I’m very, very excited about it. I really feel so lucky to get to work with Zack.
I tell him this all the time, but 300 was one of the first R-rated movies that I convinced my parents to take me to see in theaters, which I think he hates me saying because it makes me seem super young. But nevertheless, he’s been really an inspiration to me for a long time. And I think with Rebel Moon, people will just see that it’s him really getting to unleash his visual imagination to the fullest extent. And I think people will really dig it.”
We know live in a world where one of Snyder’s most trusted collaborators (Hatten also co-wrote Army of the Dead) grew up as a fan of his work. That makes us feel old when his fans are now steering the ship, but Netflix subscribers still have to wait until December to see if the first half of the intergalactic epic manages to deliver the goods.