In a podcast with fellow director Louis Leterrier (“Fast & Furious 10”), Zack Snyder talked about how his meetings with Lucasfilm went when he was offered to direct a “Star Wars” project. Until now, it was always said that his offer was rejected by George Lucas because he was already thinking about new ‘Star Wars’ films and a short time later sold his company to Disney. But Snyder told the story a little differently now.
The idea for “Rebel Moon” already existed when I was in college. While working on “Man Of Steel,” he talked about it with Christopher Nolan in the editing room of the Superman movie concluded: “I’m calling Kathleen Kennedy [damals und auch heutige Lucasfilm-Präsidentin] bee.”
Zack Snyder: There was even concept art for my “Star Wars”!
The appointment went surprisingly well. According to Snyder’s story, Kennedy responded that his idea sounded “really cool.” He had already asked if it would be possible to make the project with a mature rating, an R rating. An agreement was reached to continue talks and see how things develop.
After the meeting, he thought Lucasfilm would be open to the idea of making an R-rated “Star Wars” movie where some Jedi really go crazy. And he was very optimistic when it happened A second meeting took place with those responsible for the securities company Industrial Light and Magic. They had already surprised him with concept drawings and therefore excited about what his ideas could look like.
But two days after that meeting, he read in the trade magazines that Lucasfilm had been sold to Disney and all he thought was: “What? That’s crazy. No one told me about it. A hint in some form would have been nice.” After the deal, rejection came quickly. He was told that while they loved his idea, they were taking “Star Wars” in a different direction.
Zack Snyder thought, “Star Wars” needs me after the failed prequels
In an interview with Leterrier, Zack Snyder also revealed why he approached Lucasfilm to make a ‘Star Wars’ movie in the first place. “I remember thinking at the time: they need me. It’s going to be cool, I’m going to fix Star Wars!”
Why did Snyder think Star Wars needed to be fixed? Like many people, he was unhappy with Lucas’ prequel trilogy. He doesn’t want to go into details, but he has some problems with the decisions being made there. Snyder felt that “Star Wars” had lost its way a bit with the prequels and wanted to correct that.
Disney cancellation was “great news”
But now he considers himself lucky that it didn’t work out. His wife and production partner Deborah Snyder even told him after the cancellation, “This is the best thing that ever happened to you. This is great news.’ Because before she was against even trying. After all, he was working on “Man Of Steel” at the time and had already experienced first-hand how difficult it is to work with such a big brand like “Superman”.
Even then there were problems because he didn’t even want to change some aspects of the character, he just wanted to move them around a bit. His wife said to him at the time: “Do you know how it’s going to work in ‘Star Wars’? This will be a disaster for you.”
So he continued to entertain the idea – much to the dismay of his wife, who sometimes despaired that he was “still excited about this space movie”. Until one day, after the success of ‘Army Of The Dead’, Netflix asked what he wanted to do next and he conjured up the idea for ‘this space movie’.
So now there is “Rebel Moon – Part 1: Child of Fire“ and this will be followed in April 2024 by “Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scar Maker”. But it was not an easy birth. Because when Zack Snyder presented his project, people at Netflix were initially just as skeptical as he was with Leterrier also told. You can find this story in the following article: