Filmmakers Deborah and Zack Snyder discuss what went into the director’s cuts of their “Rebel Moon” movies on Netflix.
As Zack Snyder’s Justice League previously proved, when filmmakers Zack and Deborah Snyder embark on creating director’s cuts of their films, fans are in for a whole new experience.
The latest films to get the deluxe treatment in the Snyders’ movie universe are the first two parts of their Netflix sci-fi opus, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire and Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver. Both rated PG-13, Part One was released on Netflix in December of 2023 while Part Two debuted on the streamer in April.
New on Netflix Friday, the director’s cuts of both films—which are both rated R—have new titles and longer run times to allow for more narrative depth and character development.
As such, Chapter One: Chalice of Blood, runs 3 hours, 24 minutes and is 1 hour and 8 minutes longer than Part One: A Child of Fire. Meanwhile, Chapter Two: The Curse of Forgiveness runs 2 hours, 53 minutes, which is 50 minutes longer than Part Two: The Scargiver.
In a Zoom conversation on Monday with the husband-and-wife filmmaking team, Zack and Deborah Snyder detailed for me how a lot more went into the making of the director’s cuts than just adding scenes here and there to the original films.
“I feel like the thing that’s incredible about this process—that was surprising—was that we made four movies,” Zack Snyder said. “People may think that like, ‘Oh, well, you just knocked the director’s cuts out. They’re just the same movie and you just added a couple of shots’ but they are literally four different movies. So, we really had to approach [the films] that way. It just took a lot of effort—more effort than we thought.”
At the heart of both the original and director’s cuts of Rebel Moon is Kora (Sofia Boutella). As a young girl, Kora was torn from her home and raised to be a soldier under the tyranny of Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) and his militaristic empire known as the Imperium, which is located in a collection of planets called the Motherworld.
