Visionary director Zack Snyder has been incredibly busy since stepping away from his DC projects in the last few years, and it was recently announced that he might return to one of the cinematic worlds that made him a household name, 300, for a TV prequel. However, it's another action movie from his past that he's more eager to revisit, all while Netflix execs are urging him to continue working on Rebel Moon films.
Snyder returned to the streamer, so to speak, with the second chapter of his epic space saga, Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver, the highly anticipated sequel to 2023's Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire. But in a recent interview with Looper, the filmmaker expressed his eagerness to launch the next chapter of another somewhat recent franchise, his Army of the Dead saga. According to the Justice League: Snyder Cut namesake:
I keep telling Netflix that we need to go ahead and do some more [Army of the Dead] and they keep encouraging me to make more Rebel Moon movies. But I feel like this Army universe is really very rich and fun, and zombies never go out of style, so it just feels like a no-brainer to me.
A nod to Zack Snyder's early days as the director who remade George A. Romero's classic zombie movie Dawn of the Dead, the expansive undead mayhem of Army of the Dead tells the story of a group of thieves who break into a walled-off, zombie-infested Las Vegas to recover over $200 million locked in an underground casino vault.
The next installment, Army of Thieves, a heist movie prequel released in 2021, explored the origins of safecracker Ludwig Dieter (played by Matthias Schweighöfer) and essentially set the stage for more zombie adventures within this specific apocalypse. The eagerly awaited third chapter, the anime-style series Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, is a hot topic among fans, despite still not having a release date. And it sounds like fans aren't the only ones waiting on the edges of our seats, since Snyder sounds just as eager to keep expanding that continuity.
While Snyder’s heart may currently be with his undead-mauling heroes, Netflix has its sights set on building up his Rebel Moon-verse. Critics savaged the first film after its release, and were not much more forgiving with Part 2, but negative opinions rarely stop anyone in Hollywood. Because the film’s director and Netflix's data is to be believed, both movies were huge hits for the streamer that justify more projects.
In the March 6 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Snyder stated that Rebel Moon: Part One likely attracted more viewers with Netflix subscriptions than the billion-dollar box office sensation Barbie did with theaters-goers. This bold claim underscores the director's confidence in his space epic's popularity. He said to the host:
Say right now, [Part One is] like almost 90 million views… 80 or 90 million accounts turned it on, give or take. They assume two viewers per screen, right? So that’s 160 million people supposedly watching… at $10 a ticket, that’s $1.6 billion. More people probably saw ‘Rebel Moon’ than saw ‘Barbie’ in the theater. That’s how crazy Netflix is — that’s the distribution model that they’ve set up.
If these viewing figures are accurate, it's clear why Netflix is eager for more Rebel Moon installments, though it also unfortunately raises questions about when, if ever, Snyder might return to the zombie genre he revived with Army of the Dead in 2021.
If available, CinemaBlend will update you with any concrete news on future Army of the Dead movies. In the meantime, Zack Snyder’s latest work, the Rebel Moon films, is available to stream on Netflix.
