Rebel Moon screenwriter says Zack Snyder's vision now includes a six-movie "trilogy"

Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon continues to push all the limits—including, apparently, the limits of the English language

By William Hughes  |  April 18, 2024 | 12:59am
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Rebel Moon screenwriter says Zack Snyder's vision now includes a six-movie
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Elise Duffy and Staz Nair in Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver Photo: Netflix

Stretching the definition of the word “trilogy” to (and, frankly, beyond) its logical breaking point, one of the writers of Zack Snyder’s Netflix-set sci-fi series Rebel Moon has claimed that he and Snyder actually have plans for six movies, with each pair of two films (like last year’s initial film, and this month’s The Scargiver) essentially one “installment” of the “trilogy.” That is, admittedly, a lot of scare quotes for a single lede, but damn if the idea of a Zack Snyder trilogy in which each part consists of two two-plus-hour movies of science fiction silliness doesn’t have us feeling kind of jumpy.

This is all per franchise co-writer Kurt Johnstad, talking to ScreenRant. Johnstad was careful to note that none of this has been officially run by the money people at Netflix, who’ll presumably get some degree of final say on whether they’re interested in taking Rebel Moon out to “hypothetical Avatar sequels” territory. But the impulse is clearly there.

Here’s Johnstad, working his dark mathematics:

We have everything mapped out for many, many movies. Beyond three. Beyond four. I will go on the record now. We’ve figured this out all the way to movie six. Now, if we are so lucky and fortunate enough to continue telling these stories, that is our hope. Netflix is interested, and we’re waiting to see how these first movies go. But there is certainly a treatment for three and four. We’ve laid out very detailed… All we have to do is start writing. Actually, Zack has already started writing because he’s like that. I think he’s already written the first thirty pages of movie three. So once we get the green light to start writing, if that happens, it’ll happen fairly quickly because Shay (Hatten), Zack, and I are pretty fast. And we’ve done all the work. It’s not like, “Well, what about this.” We know exactly what we need to do.

The key, he said, was when he, Snyder, and Hatten tried to start trimming things out of the original 200 page Rebel Moon script, and realized they just couldn’t kill these particular darlings. (Keep in mind, by the way, the general Hollywood rule that says a single screenplay page equals about a minute of movie time, as you contemplate these un-make-able edits.) “We tried cutting it back to one thirty-five,” Johnstad said. “And we started cutting all of the cool character stuff. And Zack’s like, we need to go back.” Hence the plan to cut that film in half, which has now evolved into each portion of the Rebel Moon “trilogy” hypothetically getting a similar split. And, damn it, there those quotes go again, but if the idea of Zack Snyder making 12 hours of movies and calling it a “trilogy” doesn’t scare you, then you’re made of sterner stuff than us.

The Scargiver arrives on Netflix on April 19.

 
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