Zack Snyder's New Movie 'Rebel Moon' Started Out As A 'Star Wars' Film
Director and Speed Force wrangler Zack Snyder recently revealed that shooting has begun on his new Netflix movie Rebel Moon, featuring Djimon Hounsou and half a spaceship in the middle of the desert, apparently.
The film will also feature Sofia Boutella, Ray Fisher, and Cary Elwes, AKA the best non-fox, non-giant creep movie Robin Hood. Obviously, the images of an alien desert planet recall the Star Wars movies (and also the roughly 500 Star Wars TV shows set on Tatooine), not to mention that the name, Rebel Moon, sounds like it was created using an online Star Wars title generator – or at least a David Bowie song title generator – so it may come as no surprise that this project actually started as a pitch for a Star Wars spin-off.
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Back in 2013, it was rumored that Snyder was developing a standalone Star Wars movie “loosely based” on Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai – which Snyder flat-out denied at the time. Last year, Snyder admitted that the story was true and that he was still planning on making the film, “just away from the Star Wars universe.” And, hey, to be fair, recycling sci-fi concepts you don’t legally have the rights to is pretty much how George Lucas made Star Wars in the first place.
The premise of Rebel Moon does sound distinctly Seven Samurai-esque, concerning “a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy” that is “threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent named Balisarius.” This prompts “a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make a stand.”
Of course, as we’ve mentioned before, ripping off Japanese cinema is nothing new for the Star Wars franchise; and multiple Star Wars projects, including Clone Wars and The Mandalorian, have conspicuously borrowed specifically from Seven Samurai. Although it remains to be seen if Snyder’s project actually obtained the rights to adapt the Kurosawa film, which he has evidently proclaimed multiple times to be the source of his inspiration, since previous unauthorized, genre-swapping remakes, such as the classic Western The Magnificent Seven, have historically prompted lengthy, acrimonious legal disputes …
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Top Image: Netflix
