So, a long time ago, in a board room in Pasadena, Zack Snyder pitched Lucasfilm on making a Star Wars movie. This was back in the heady pre-Last Jedi era, in which nerds were generally pleased with the fact that control of the franchise had been wrested away from George Lucas by the House of Mouse and Disney had enough goodwill to spend by “trying new things.” This was when Josh Trank was going to make a movie about Boba Fett, and when Lord and Miller were still attached to Solo — back then known as Untitled Han Solo Film, which was what it was called basically until it came out on DVD.
Snyder’s pitch was a little different: He wanted to make a Seven Samurai riff, with the Jedi subbing in for the samurai/cowboys/you name it. After all, it’s not like Lucas himself didn’t owe a large cinematic debt to Akira Kurosawa, with The Hidden Fortress being one of the big inspirations behind A New Hope. Anyhow, they wound up passing on the project, and Snyder went on to do movies for Netflix, and fast forward a few years and change a bunch of copyrighted nouns, and you have the trailer for Rebel Moon, which Netflix dropped earlier on Tuesday. Yep, this looks as dope as it sounds.
Take a look:
Here’s a synopsis, which we think you should read on your phone so that you can do a nice vertical scroll, à la a title crawl:
“From Zack Snyder, the filmmaker behind ‘300,’ ‘Man of Steel,’ and ‘Army of the Dead,’ comes ‘REBEL MOON,’ an epic science-fantasy event decades in the making. When a peaceful colony on the edge of a galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, Kora (Sofia Boutella), a mysterious stranger living among the villagers, becomes their best hope for survival. Tasked with finding trained fighters who will unite with her in making an impossible stand against the Mother World, Kora assembles a small band of warriors — outsiders, insurgents, peasants and orphans of war from different worlds who share a common need for redemption and revenge. As the shadow of an entire Realm bears down on the unlikeliest of moons, a battle over the fate of a galaxy is waged, and in the process, a new army of heroes is formed.”
Rebel Moon is a two-parter, it turns out, with the first installment, A Child of Fire, scheduled to hit Netflix on December 22. The second, The Scargiver, will drop on April 19, 2024. So you’ve already got Christmas and 4/20 plans scheduled, it seems.