Zack Snyder's Justice League experience meant Rebel Moon was almost a TV show – but the Snyder Cut changed everything
Nov. 30, 2023Exclusive: Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was almost a TV show
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
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 epicJustice 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 ofSFX magazine, which features Doctor Who on the cover, says of Justice League. Newman produced Snyder’sDawn of the Deadremake and is a co-producer on Rebel Moon.
The 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-realSnyder 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 aHouse of the Dragonthing. 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.
Sign up to the SFX Newsletter
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
“In some ways, the Snyder Cut and his experience onArmy of the Deadwith 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.
Not a subscriber to SFX? Thenhead on over here to get the latest issues sent directly to your home/device!
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 inthe 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 thenewsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.
Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.
Netflix’s new #1 movie is a sci-fi thriller that stars Megan Fox as an AI robot - and it has a pretty divisive Rotten Tomatoes score
Andrew Garfield says he’s “disappointed” he couldn’t do Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, but Jacob Elordi “needed it more” than him
Get hundreds of hours of RPG goodness for $30 with this bundle of 8 games that includes the first two Baldur’s Gate games, which are absolutely worth playing
