It may seem presumptuous for Zack Snyder to bank on “Rebel Moon” becoming big enough to warrant a franchise on the same level as Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe before its first entry releases. However, the idea of building such a massive sandbox was on Netflix’s mind from the start when Snyder presented the idea, with the director telling Empire, “When I pitched it to Netflix, the scale was a thing they wanted. They were like, ‘Well, how big could it be? How many movies?’ That made me go, ‘Okay, if we really do this, we can sink our teeth pretty deep into this. We can’t really hit the bottom.'”
Thankfully, Snyder seems more than prepared for the gargantuan task. The writing team has detailed the entire timeline of the Rebel Moon story on a 12-foot whiteboard, with only a few inches dedicated to the first two films. Similarly, Snyder has written a detailed 450-page bible about the film’s antagonists, the Imperium forces. The project’s scope is so massive that the titular moon won’t appear until the third movie. “The Rebel Moon is not the moon that they’re on,” Snyder told Empire. “The title was conceptual, but there’s a planet named Vanna, and Vanna is the rebel moon. It’s not even in one shot of this movie!” With such a grand production and high hopes for its follow-ups, time will tell how Netflix’s big-time gamble with “Rebel Moon” pays off.
