Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon – Part One’ Sets Limited 70mm Theatrical Run in Four Major Cities Ahead of Netflix Debut
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Zack Snyder’s space adventure film “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” has set a one-week theatrical run ahead of its debut on Netflix. The film will be playing exclusively on 70mm from Dec. 15-21 at the following locations: Los Angeles (Egyptian Theatre), New York City (Paris Theater), Toronto (TIFF Bell Lightbox) and London (Prince Charles Cinema). Netflix owns the Paris Theater and the Egyptian Theatre. The first “Rebel Moon” film streams Dec. 22 on Netflix.
Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein, Cleopatra Coleman and Cary Elwes star in Snyder’s latest, which centers on an enigmatic young woman living in a peaceful colony on the outskirts of the galaxy. She’s given the task of finding warriors who can fend off an impending invasion by a tyrannical despot.
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Snyder said recently that “Rebel Moon” and his last film, the Netflix zombie action movie “Army of the Dead,” are part of the same universe.
“’Army of the Dead’ has a pretty vast mythology that never made it into the movie,” he told Total Film. “There’s actually a character from ‘Rebel Moon’ in the ‘Army of the Dead’ animated series that we never did.”
Snyder originally conceived “Rebel Moon” as a “Seven Samurai”-inspired “Star Wars” movie that he pitched to Lucasfilm shortly after Disney acquired the studio in 2012 for $4.05 billion. The director wanted to create original characters and he pushed for an R-rated script, which ultimately led “Rebel Moon” to become its own property outside of the “Star Wars” franchise.
The director wrote the project as a single film, but Netflix was hesitant to take it on because the script clocked in at 172 pages. At that length, “Rebel Moon” would’ve had a runtime around three hours. The two parties agreed to split the film into two halves, with the second “Rebel Moon” film arriving next year.
Snyder is also working on two separate cuts of each “Rebel Moon” movie. One cut is a movie that “anyone can enjoy and watch,” while the other will be more explicit and strictly for adults. “I think for fans of mine and people who are ready to take a deeper, harder dive, that’ll be fun for them,” Snyder told Vanity Fair earlier this year. He later revealed on Netflix’s Tudum that the director’s cuts will include nearly 60 minutes of additional footage.
“The director’s cut is close to an hour of extra content, so I think it’s a legitimate extended universe version,” Snyder said. “You really get to see a lot. It’s just more painted-in all the way. The director’s [cut] is a settle-in deep dive, which I have notoriously done throughout my career. I don’t know how I got into this director’s cut thing, but what I will say about it is that, for me, the director’s cuts have always been something I had to fight for in the past and nobody wanted it. It was this bastard child that I was always trying to put together because they felt like there was a deeper version. And with Netflix, we shot scenes just for the director’s cut. So in that way, it’s really a revelation because it gives that second kick at the can for big fans.”
The second “Rebel Moon” film, titled “The Scargiver,” will arrive on April 19, 2024.
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