Rebel Moon 3 looks like it’s stuck in a galaxy far far away after creator and director Zack Snyder issued a pessimistic update about the sequel’s chances.
Snyder’s flashy Rebel Moon franchise for Netflix was meant to usher in a new Star Wars-style universe, but both 2023’s Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire and its follow-up, 2024’s Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, were savaged by critics. Even the release of extended R-rated versions, which Snyder had said were more closely aligned with his vision, failed to move the needle.
Speaking to The Direct in a new interview to promote his new movie, The Last Photograph, Snyder gave a hesitant answer that suggested the existing Rebel Moon movies would need to gather significant support for a third movie to become a reality.
“I don’t know,” he began. “… I made the director’s cuts of the movies, and I just think it’s like one of those things where… and I do feel that as those maybe get a little bit more popular and sort of like get discovered and there’s a little bit more groundswell about maybe making another one.”
To me this is dancing around the true answer, which is no, Rebel Moon 3 is not in the works and probably won’t ever be. Snyder is striking a different tone to the one he had a year ago, when he told Variety he was waiting for the dust to settle before deciding how to proceed with Rebel Moon.
“I got sidetracked into this — not sidetracked, it’s all uptown problems, as they say — for Netflix, I’m working on an LAPD SWAT movie,” Snyder said. “So I was like, OK, well, I’m gonna just sort of let that ‘Rebel Moon’ world boil for a minute, and I’m gonna go do this. And frankly, it was a very exhausting, long process doing the two movies together. So it was nice to have a bit of a break from it. I love it like crazy, but it’s nice to have a bit of a break. So yeah, we’ll see after I finish this, when I come back, where we are with everything.”
“There’s tons of stories,” he continued. So, I mean, I think it’s literally, it’s endless. But, again, like I say, I’m waiting to see how we want to and in what way we would move forward, if at all.”
Last year, Rebel Moon’s co-writer Kurt Johnstad told the Minutemen Podcast: “We outlined movies 3, 4, 5, and 6. Those decisions are way above me, like how those things are made and where the money is gonna come from. I hope we get a chance to tell that story to its very end because it’s an amazing world, and I loved writing those characters — Kora and Jimmy, it’s just fantastic.
“We know where we can go, and we have very detailed outlines. Zack has literally plotted out the whole world. So with some luck and an act of god we’ll get to go back to that world.”
It sounds like Snyder will indeed need a miracle to keep Rebel Moon going.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
