When is a Star Wars not a Star Wars? When Lucasfilm says no and you file off the serial numbers to sell it to Netflix. Such is the fabled origin of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, which hits Netflix on December 22.
For real, that’s what happened: Snyder pitched his take on Star Wars to George and the boys post-prequel trilogy, pre-Disney buy-out, before reconfiguring the material into something less beholden to extant IP. The result being summed up in this handy official synopsis:
When a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius, they dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past named Kora to seek out warriors from neighbouring planets to help them take a stand.
And if that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the premise of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Which has also served as the basis from everything from The Magnificent Seven to Battle Beyond the Stars to A Bug’s Life (Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, of course, inspired the OG Star Wars). So that’s a robust enough framework, and it does provide us with plenty of fun roles for a game cast.
Said cast includes Sofia Boutella as Kora, our warrior with a past, Fra Fee as Balisarius, plus Djimon Hounsou, Charlie Hunnam, Ray Fisher, Michiel Huisman, Ed Skrein, Bae Doona, Cleopatra Coleman, Jena Malone, and Anthony Hopkins as various intergalactic warriors, pirates, and vagabonds.
Rebel Moon is ostensibly the start of a massive multimedia franchise, with part 2 being shot back-to-back for later release. Of course, that all largely depends on how this opening salvo is received by the wider audience. Without a trailer to go by as yet, we can only say we’re quietly hopeful—if nothing else, the formula has certainly worked in the past.
