After being on the outs with Warner Bros. over Justice League, Zack Snyder moved on to make Army of The Dead at Netflix and has decided to make his next couple films at the streaming giant.
Deadline reports that actress Sofia Boutella (Atomic Blonde, Star Trek Beyond) has nabbed the lead role in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, a project that originally started out as his Star Wars pitch to Lucasfilm during the early days that Disney acquired the franchise.
Rebel Moon is a sci-fi take on Akira Kurosawa’s iconic samurai flick Seven Samurai that Snyder co-wrote with Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad.
The story is set in motion when a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy is threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent named Balisarius. Desperate people dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them make a stand.
Boutella will play the film’s female heroine and has a dance background making her a perfect selection for the action sequences. Interestingly enough, she had a big role in the last Star Trek film and might be up for extensive makeup if it’s required.
After Rebel Moon, Snyder will direct Planet of The Dead, a sequel to Army of The Dead.
In the early days of Disney acquiring Lucasfilm and the Star Wars rights, there were various reports that the studio was open to multiple film pitches from filmmakers. One of those pitches was reportedly from Army of The Dead director Zack Snyder and would have been a possible Jedi film inspired by the works of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Akira’s film The Hidden Fortress had been a notable inspiration to the original trilogy, so going back to those classic samurai films for ideas sort of sounded appealing at the time.
Here is how that original report from Vulture described the project back in 2013, alluding to the project being an anthology project similar to things like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story.
He is in fact developing a Star Wars project for Lucasfilm that is set within the series’ galaxy, though parallel to the next trilogy. It will be an as-yet-untitled Jedi epic loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, with the ronin and katana being replaced by the Force-wielding knights and their iconic lightsabers.
If you’re unfamiliar with the iconic Japanese film, it follows a group of ronin (former samurai that no longer serve a master/lord) that come together to save a poor village of farmers against relentless bandits in an attempt to restore their honor. Seven Samurai was famously remade as the equally popular Hollywood western, The Magnificent Seven.
The project ultimately wasn’t made and Snyder instead established the DCEU with Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League. However, Snyder has confirmed to the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via The Playlist) that he indeed was trying to get that project going at Lucasfilm (prior to the Disney acquisition) but has instead pivoted to rework the idea as something else outside of the Star Wars universe, but will still be set within the science-fiction genre.
SNYDER: “We talked about it, but it never [happened]. I’ve been working on it away from the ‘Star Wars’ universe, on my own, as a sci-fi thing…It’s still a sci-fi thing. It’s the same story. Now, I’m just going to let ‘Star Wars’ be ‘Star Wars.’”
“The 11-year-old me still wants to make that, and now, I know how to. So, maybe we’ll see that someday.”
Could Netflix end up giving Zack Snyder the money to make the project? It’s possible as the streaming giant is keen on continuing the working relationship with the filmmaker as they build a franchise around his zombie film Army of The Dead, after Warner Bros. passed on it.
The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Bryan Cogman has landed an overall deal at Entertainment One (formerly at Amazon) and his first project will be a commentary series based on the iconic Akira Kurosawa masterpiece Yojimbo that starred legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune.
The first project under the pact is a contemporary take on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
YOJIMBO (1961) – A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master (Toshiro Mifune), enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon (Kamatari Fujiwara) and sake merchant Tokuemon (Takashi Shimura) to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
The samurai film, like Seven Samurai, influenced multiple versions in the west most famously the Sergio Leone western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) that starred Clint Eastwood and there was also a lesser known gangster remake from Walter Hill with Last Man Standing (1996) starring Bruce Willis. It also has had some influence on more modern projects such as the Star Wars series The Mandalorian.
Cogman previously worked on HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones and the first season of Amazon’s expensive Lord of The Rings series. He also penned Disney’s live-action Stone In The Stone film.
FX is also attempting their own modern samurai series with a revival of Shogun based on the novel by James Clavell.
THE RONIN 