Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire – Picture: Netflix
With Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver on Netflix, the wait is now on for Rebel Moon’s long-awaited and much-talked-about R-rated extended-cut editions. What do we know so far about them? Let’s dive in.
Why are Zack Snyder and Netflix doing the extended editions? Nobody has gone on the record about how they came about in the first place, but it’s likely a combination of factors.
Firstly, at this point, it’s become part of Zack Snyder’s brand to have the so-called Snyder cut. It was popularized with his Snyder cut of the Justice League, which was released in 2021. As a quick reminder, Snyder stepped away from Justice League after a family tragedy, and the reigns were handed over to Joss Whedon. Warner Bros. Pictures eventually allowed Zack Snyder to produce his extended four-hour version, which was released in March 2023. It’s worth noting that the year before this was released, a pandemic was putting pressure on WB’s other movies in the pipeline.
Deborah Snyder said at a recent Q&A that Zack is known for his cuts. Netflix wanted to cash in on that from the get-go, with the executive producer saying, “They [Netflix] didn’t just want deleted scenes,” but rather different versions entirely.
Snyder has also repeatedly discussed providing extended director cuts of his other movies, such as Sucker Punch.
Secondly, and this is purely from reading between the lines of Snyder’s comments thus far, which are plentiful, it seems clear that Netflix wanted the first releases of the movies to be PG-13, likely to catch a larger audience.
Did news of the extended cuts leak earlier than planned?
Although it looks like it was always the plan for extended cuts of the two Rebel Moon films to be released, what probably wasn’t planned was when the news about those cuts got out.
SlashFilm’s Ryan Scott was the first to announce that those editions would be coming soon. In an interview with Andy Koyama about another movie entirely, John Wick: Chapter 4, Rebel Moon is brought up midway through the interview.
“We just did the first temp mix for the preview of part one, and it’s very exciting. It’s a big, huge, space — they probably don’t want me to say this — ‘Star Wars’-y, ‘rebels against the evil empire’ thing over all sorts of different worlds. It’s really fun. There’s going to be two films. I think we’re mixing that from June to February. And there’s also going to be extended R-rated versions of each of the two films, so we’re going to be mixing four different features.”
Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver. Cr. Clay Enos/Netflix ©2023.
What even are the Extended R-rated versions?
Nailing what precisely these extended R-rated cuts are is a bit of a job in itself. Is it a re-edited and extended version of the PG-13 movies, or are they shot entirely differently?
The answer is more of the latter camp, by the sounds of it.
On The Joe Rogan Experience, Snyder says they’re entirely different movies than extended cuts. The director spoke about how Netflix essentially got four movies for the price of two while also saying each film is an hour longer in these new cuts. “What we did inside those movies with tone and with gore and sex and all that stuff within the same framework,” Snyder said.
In an interview with EntertainmentWeekly, Snyder went into more detail about the differences. “Tonally, they’re completely different,” the director told them, adding, “Emotionally, it’s more like a parallel universe than an extended version. Things happen that in the R-rated version that don’t happen in the PG-13. The event order is all different, so it’s really an interesting exercise.
Ahead of part 2’s release on Netflix, Snyder participated in a Q&A captured by Rama’s Screen, in which he teased that many scenes were shot twice—once for the PG-13 versions available now and once for the R-rated versions.
“In some of the scenes, the same line that is delivered in the R-rated version as opposed to PG-13 is a different take than it is in PG-13. So even though it’s the exact same words, the performance is slightly different. And so we were in the weeds that deep. We were like, in the alternative universe, this is the correct take for this movie, as opposed to the PG-13 version where that take is the correct take.”
This is re-iterated by Marcus Taormina, who worked on the movies as a VFX supervisor, saying to FilmSpeak:
“We shot so much material. It was bound to have things drop on the cutting room floor […] So with that amount on the cutting room floor, you don’t want to just leave it there, right? […] There’s potential to expand further with the extended cuts.”
Release of Extended R-Rated Cuts Expected in Summer 2024
There is no release date for the extended cuts, and some conflicting information about when they will be available. Ed Skrein, at one point in December of 2023, suggested that the extended cut of the first movie would be coming out before Part 2, but that hasn’t been the case.
Variety reported in November 2023 that the extended cuts wouldn’t be available until late 2024.
However, the current thesis, as Zack Snyder first stated in March 2024 in an interview with I Minutemen (see the video embedded below), said they would be coming to Netflix in the Summer of 2024.
In the Joe Rogan podcast, Snyder again stated the Summer of 2024 but said it would be much later.
Both director’s cuts will be released on Netflix together.
This is all while noting that Netflix themselves still haven’t yet confirmed or listed the extended cuts in any of their materials for the press or visibly in the Netflix app.
What’s the Runtime of the R-Rated Director’s Cut?
Like the release date, the exact runtime for the extended cuts has not been confirmed to the minute, but, as stated above, each movie has roughly an extra hour of content.
Still, in that aforementioned interview on I MINUTEMEN, Snyder mentioned that the expected runtime of the two extended cuts is “six hours together.”
Zack Snyder shared a frame from the #RebelMoon director’s cut on Vero pic.twitter.com/CxK60vMi9D
— Rebel Mooning (@snyder_all) December 28, 2023
As Zack Snyder has said a lot else on the new extended director’s R-rated cuts, here are a few more tidbits we’ve found:
- In an interview with ComicBook.com, Snyder said the director’s cut’s emphasis on a sci-fi deconstructive element, intending to juxtapose elements like heavy metal, violence, and sexuality within a high-budget production. He concludes, saying the new cuts offer a “more personal and bizarre viewing experience.”
- In the aforementioned Express interview, it was stated that the new cuts will feature a brand-new opening that focuses on Noble. A subsequent interview states the opening sequence to the first movie is 20 minutes long, but none of that is present in the currently available movie.
- In an interview with Looper, there are reportedly up to 30 more minutes of Jimmy in these director’s cuts.
- In early April 2024, Snyder said that they’re still working on the new movies and trying to get the cuts down to R-rated as opposed to NC-17.
Thanks to some excellent X accounts that track down everything Snyder and Rebel Moon on the social media site, especially Snyder Netflix Updates and Snyder_All (currently called Rebel Mooning).
Are you looking forward to the extended cuts of Rebel Moon? Let us know in the comments down below.