Picture: Netflix
With Zack Snyder confirmed to be staying within the Netflix family in 2025 and beyond, we thought we’d take a retrospective look at the performance of Rebel Moon to see how well the movies have performed, explore plans for Snyder’s next project at Netflix, and discuss what’s next for the sci-fi franchise.
As a quick reminder, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire first had a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 15, 2023, and became available for streaming on Netflix over the Christmas period on December 22, 2023. The sequel, once again PG, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, was released on Netflix on April 19th, 2024, without a theatrical release. Both films’ R-rated director’s cuts of the films were released on August 2nd, 2024.
Rebel Moon: Hits or Flops for Netflix?
Here comes the contentious part of the article—were the movies successful for Netflix? Netflix hasn’t publicly said anything about this, so we’ll have to look purely at the data. First, let’s stack up the two movie’s performances over the first three weeks (we can’t do four because Rebel Moon Part 2 dropped out after week 3) of release against some of Netflix’s biggest hits from the last couple of years to see where they rank:
If we stack up against Rebel Moon’s part 1 vs. part 2 performance over time, you can see that the audience didn’t grow from the first to the second movie and plateaued much sooner.
What about the director’s cuts? Sadly, we don’t have any data directly from Netflix, given that both extended director’s cuts of the movie failed to enter the global top 10s. That means they picked up less than 3.6M views between July 29th and August 4th and less than 4.2M in their first full week on Netflix between August 5th and 11th.
FlixPatrol, who assigns points to movies in the daily Netflix top 10s in over 90 countries, perhaps demonstrates the drop-off when you take their points total given that the extended cuts were only in the Netflix top 10s for a couple of days in most countries:
- Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire – 16,539 points
- Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver – 10,870 points
- Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness – 684 points
- Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood – 501 points
The Netflix Engagement Reports will continue to provide insights into the performance of the movies in the future, but for now, we only have the last half of 2023 and the first half of 2024. The two director cuts came out in August, and we haven’t received data yet. Here’s how the data breaks down so far:
| Title Name | Runtime | 2023H2 Hours | 2023H2 Views | 2024H1 Hours | 2024H1 Views | Combined Hours | Combined Views |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire | 2:16 | 131,100,000 | 57,800,000 | 122,800,000 | 54,200,000 | 253,900,000 | 112,000,000 |
| Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver | 2:04 | 0 | 0 | 115,300,000 | 55,800,000 | 115,300,000 | 55,800,000 |
| Creating a Universe – The Making of Rebel Moon | 0:28 | 0 | 0 | 900,000 | 1,900,000 | 900,000 | 1,900,000 |
So, what’s the conclusion here? You can’t look at the numbers above and conclude it was a runaway success for Netflix. While we don’t think it was an outright flop, given that we heard Netflix internally hoped this would be their equivalent of Star Wars, we don’t think the numbers ultimately lived up to expectations.
What is the latest with Rebel Moon Part 3?
Snyder has been ambitious about his Rebel Moon plans since the beginning, although since the release of Rebel Moon Director’s Cuts, all has been quiet regarding the movie’s future.
Multiple conflicting statements have been made about how many films will be for the main film series. On the one hand, he’s stated it was originally a trilogy but also suggested there could be up to six films. Even when talking about six movies, how that number is broken down is a little confusing. In December 2023, it was reported that Snyder was working on the script for the third movie, with an additional update in April 2024 that treatments had been completed for both a third and fourth movie.
Snyder has been unapologetically ambitious for Rebel Moon with far-reaching multi-media plans, including an animated series.
The same can be said for most things Snyder works on, though. The director is often considered overambitious and optimistic, or you could turn that on its head and say he tends to overpromise and underdeliver. It is a matter of perspective, I suppose.
Rebel Moon Extended Directors Cuts
Similar grand plans were in place for the Army of the Dead franchise with a string of interviews and announcements regarding spin-offs and sequels. As revealed earlier this year, however, the franchise is now on permanent ice, with neither the planned sequel nor the animated spin-off moving forward.
From talking to numerous people, we understand that the franchise is paused beyond the two-game projects we’ll discuss in a second. Things may change, but we understand that Snyder is currently focused on other projects (more on that in a second), and Netflix has no plans to green-light any sequel soon.
In the past, when Netflix had a hit movie franchise, it tended to announce public plans for future entries soon after. For instance, that was true for Enola Holmes, The Sea Beast, Red Notice, and The Gray Man. Sequels were announced in the latter two cases but haven’t yet gone into production; the announcements were based purely on performance.
We contacted Netflix about what we heard regarding their lack of plans for future movies. However, they did not respond, which is unsurprising given that they’re usually reluctant to confirm cancellations.
Rebel Moon Will Continue In Game Form For The Foreseeable Future
So far, Rebel Moon has continued beyond the two movies in the form of multiple books and the podcast series The Seneschal. But what’s next? Only two games—a mobile title and a VR experience — have been announced as the two current expansions in the world.
The main project is a new mobile game being developed by Super Evil Megacorp. Titled Blood Line: A Rebel Moon Game, the four-player co-op game is due out in 2025 and is currently in closed beta. The same development team is behind TMNT Splintered Fate.
The game format continues into a VR experience called Rebel Moon: The Descent, which has “soft launched” at Sandbox VR locations across the United States and in select European and Asian locations as of November 2024.
The description of the experience says you’ll be choosing your own Rebel Fighter to face off against the tyrannical Motherworld. The description adds, “Explore the world of Daggus and descend through towering skyscrapers, gritty urban streets, and a subterranean mine as you battle against enemy soldiers, spacecraft, and more!”
Picture: Sandbox
We should also mention that there were plans for a tabletop game from Evil Genius Games at one point, although those plans ultimately fell through, leading to a lawsuit.
What’s Zack Snyder Working on Next?
Revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, Zack Snyder is currently developing (it’s unclear whether it’s at a green light stage) a new Los Angeles Police Department thriller for the streamer.
Netflix has yet to confirm the projects themselves officially. However, the movie has been described as “set in a high-stakes world of life and death, watching as an elite LAPD unit is relentlessly confronted with the unforgiving collision of law and morality.”
Following the news, Deborah Snyder shared on Instagram, “I’m excited to be partnering with our amazing team at Netflix again.”
Snyder did actually tease the new movie while doing press for the extended director’s cuts of Rebel Moon. He told a podcast, “We’re trying to do a small movie right now. I won’t say what it is, but I wanted to. I was like, ‘Can we just do a movie without any VFX in it for five minutes, and then we get back to the insanity?”
We should almost mention another Snyder project currently in limbo at Netflix. We’re referring to Twilight of the Gods, which debuted with its first season in September and wasn’t greenlit for a second season at the time. It certainly sets up a second season, but there’s been no word about whether the series is returning.
What do you think the future of Rebel Moon will be? Do you love movies, and do you want to see more? Let us know in the comments.
Netflix Synopsis: "When the ruthless forces of the Motherworld threaten a quiet farming village on a distant moon, a mysterious outsider becomes its best hope for survival."
