Zack Snyder‘s Rebel Moon was meant to be a sprawling six-part space opera, a big swing at building a new sci-fi mythology for Netflix. But after two films and a mountain of mixed reactions, mostly bad, the dream seemed to crash and burn.
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver didn’t land the way it needed to. Sure, it opened strong and briefly topped Netflix’s viewership charts, but the drop-off was steep. Engagement plummeted after the premiere, and critical reception has been cold.
Rotten Tomatoes has the film sitting at a 16% with a brutal 3.8/10 average score. Critics described it as “an uninvolving space opera full of flat notes.” And while Part One: A Child of Fire was no critical hit either, there was still a sense of curiosity, but that curiosity seems to have burned out.
Despite Netflix sinking an estimated $166 million into the first two chapters, the response has likely given executives second thoughts about funding another big-budget sequel, let alone four more. The silence from Netflix since the release of Scargiver has been telling.
Still, screenwriter Kurt Johnstad, who co-wrote both Rebel Moon films with Snyder, says there is a plan. A very detailed one. On a recent episode of the I MINUTEMEN podcast, he shared just how far down the road the team had gone in building out the universe, and how unlikely it is that fans will ever see where that road leads.
“We outlined movies 3, 4, 5, and 6… very detailed outlines, and Zack has literally plotted out the whole world. We know where we can go… we’ve written… detailed outlines.
“The second movie was to find the princess. And the third movie is to make sure that the princess is where she should be — sitting on the throne and properly ruling… over the Mother World.”
It sounds promising, but those first two movie were not good. When asked point-blank about the odds of a third film happening, Johnstad didn’t sugarcoat it:
“With some luck and an act of God, we’ll get to go back to that world.”
Not exactly a confidence booster.
For now, Snyder and Johnstad are shifting gears and pivoting away from space rebellions and into a new Netflix project: a gritty LAPD thriller. It’s reportedly lower-budget and more grounded, a notable departure from the recent string of high-concept Snyder-verse spectacles (Army of the Dead, Rebel Moon, 300).
At this point, Rebel Moon’s legacy might be less about the saga we were promised and more about the reality of ambitious worldbuilding in the streaming era… no matter how big your galaxy is, if people aren’t watching, the universe collapses fast.
So unless divine intervention shows up wielding a checkbook and a greenlight, don’t expect to see another Rebel Moon movie.
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