Courtesy of Netflix Malaysia, we were lucky enough to be able to join a virtual press conference for the upcoming Rebel Moon Part One A Child Of Fire. The director of the movie, Zack Snyder, and several major cast and crew members participated in the press conference, including Deborah Snyder (producer), Sofia Boutella (“Kora”), Bae Doona (“Nemesis”), and Ed Skrein (“Admiral Atticus Noble”).

During the press conference, Zack Snyder talked about how he originally came up with the idea for his new Rebel Moon franchise.

He said:

The story’s pretty straightforward. It’s about a group of farmers on a distant planet who get visited by this evil Empire that basically want them to supply food to theor soldiers and they’re faced with the choice whether to do that or whether to fight back. And in order to fight back, they would have to figure whether to go out into the galaxy and find soldiers or try to fight for themselves, and they decided to find soldiers.

And that’s kind of the basic premise. And I’ve been working on it for quite a while. I mean, as a germ of an idea, it’s existed since 1977, since I saw Star Wars. The eleven-year-old me went, you know what, I could do that.

*laughs*

I didn’t say that, a little bit I did, but I said I could do something like that. Maybe not as good but close. And then basically from 1977 to 1987, all the movies I saw, 1987 put me as a sophomore in college, and 1977 I was eleven years old, I was a child. It was those years, I think it’s true probably for everybody, that’s when you get your aesthetic kind of gets formed a little bit, you kind of see it in that time period. For me, it started, bookended at the front with Star Wars and sort of my love for cinema.

I remember having my parents drive me to see Throne Of Blood, a Kurosawa movie called Throne Of Blood. And they dropped me off because they were like, why are you going to see this movie, it’s subtitled, it’s a Japanese movie. I was like, it’s awesome and they were like, you’re thirteen years old. Of course, movies like Seven Samurai and John Boorman’s Excalibur, John Milius’ Conan The Barbarian, Empire Strikes Back, of course. The other end is for me, like 1986’s Blue Velvet, so it’s Star Wars on this end and Blue Velvet on that end. And of course, movies like All That Jazz and these are just the movies that I fell in love with. I don’t know how much reference to All That Jazz there is in the movie (Rebel Moon) but certainly to the sort of sci-fi fantasy.

And of course, I was influenced by a magazine that I used to love to read, which was Heavy Metal, which was an adult illustrated fantasy magazine. That I started reading as a child when I shouldn’t have. It was meant for adults and my mother by accident got me a subscription because it looked like a comic book. When I was too young, I won’t say how old, it’s full of sex and violence and craziness and I was like, this is the greatest thing ever.

So, it was out of that, this fertile ground, this thing grew that is now I group these people into and are making a movie about. That’s the longest answer possible and I apologize.

Rebel Moon Part One A Child Of Fire will premiere on Netflix Malaysia on 22 December 2023.