Despite it only being halfway through the first month of the year, people are already getting hyped for a film that will end the year with a bang. A teaser for Zach Snyder’s Rebel Moon has fans salivating on social media, and with a lack of an end-of-year film from Marvel, it looks like it could potentially overshadow the superhero franchise which has left some feeling weary after a lackluster phase four.
Rebel Moon is Snyder’s attempt to create something similar to Star Wars. He originally pitched it to Lucasfilm and it was originally in development as a Star Wars film in the time between the end of the prequels (2005) and the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney. It has now found a home on Netflix, which will be releasing it at the end of this year. Tudum summarises the film:
“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 neighboring planets to help them take a stand.”
The film will be landing on the streaming platform on Dec. 22 of this year and will likely be one of the big hits off to round out the year with media outlets such as Variety tweeting that “Zack Snyder’s #RebelMoon will be Netflix’s big Christmas event movie.” The hype for the film already proves just how anticipated it is, leaving us wondering whether Rebel Moon might overshadow any films Marvel is putting out this year.
The MCU’s phase four had its ups and downs, but overall fans haven’t been as impressed by it compared to the studio’s previous work. Sure they’ve had some hits, such as Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but for many, the phase overall hasn’t quite hit the spot. The recent Thor: Love and Thunder film left much to be desired for many fans and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness left audiences highly divided.
The one thing the phase did do well place many of their most highly-anticipated movies at the end of the year with No Way Home and Wakanda Forever both ringing the year out for Marvel (and yes, there was also the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special). These films did exceedingly well for the studio, with the former breaking a tonne of records and landing on the top ten highest-grossing movies of all time.
Despite this placement being a winning strategy for Marvel, it would seem that they are opting not to do that moving forward. There is currently no film set to be released after The Marvels which lands in cinemas on July 28. There were some MCU series planned to be released at that time but they have been bogged down with delays that may see their releases pushed.
On top of this, one of Marvel’s actors, Brie Larson, who will be leading the charge in The Marvels, receives a disproportionate amount of vitriol from the MCU fanbase. This could also lead to the film not quite doing as well as its counterparts as people opt not to support Larson in the role and boycott the film as they did with her first solo outing.
With this being the case, it is likely that during the Marvel drought, Snyder’s Rebel Moon will likely receive a lot more attention, especially given the fact that diehard DC fans have been waiting for something like this from the director for some time. Though Rebel Moon isn’t technically a superhero film… it kind of is (if being a Jedi, for example, is not a superhero power we don’t know what is) and fans will be ready to lap it up.
The story will be served across two films to complete the grandness of Snyder’s scope for it. This is a project that the director has been working on for some time now and is an homage to his love of Star Wars and also to the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, whose legendary film Seven Samurai was one of the main inspirations behind Rebel Moon. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder says,
“This is me growing up as an Akira Kurosawa fan, a Star Wars fan. It’s my love of sci-fi and a giant adventure. My hope is that this also becomes a massive IP and a universe that can be built out.”
Based on the positive attention it has received already since the teaser was released via Netflix’s 2023 sizzle reel, it looks like this year Marvel has some stiff competition on its hands.