Summary
- "Rebel Moon is an original IP, an exciting sci-fi project that Zack Snyder has been developing for over 20 years."
- "The production process for Rebel Moon is one of the biggest projects Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller have worked on with Zack Snyder."
- "The film features massive sets, three different languages, and original iconology, creating a unique and challenging world-building endeavor."
Zack Snyder's sci-fi epic Rebel Moon is set to become one of the biggest movies ever made by Netflix, and Screen Rant interviewed producers Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller during our visit to the set in October 2022. Since Rebel Moon is actually two movies shot back-to-back, with Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire releasing on December 2023 and Rebel Moon: The Scargiver releasing April 19 2024, the Rebel Moon production process is one of the biggest projects Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller have produced with Zack Snyder to date.
During the set visit we toured multiple stages and other areas of production during our chats with Snyder and Coller, so this interview is a collection of several smaller conversations edited together to retain clarity and context. From Zack Snyder's writing, drawing, and development process to the construction of massive sets and the future of the Rebel Moon franchise with story opportunities in books, comics, and more.
Deborah Snyder: [Rebel Moon is] an original IP, which is really exciting, but no one really knows anything about it…So you can get an idea of the worlds and I think the - the fun part about this and this idea that Zack had, I think it started like before we were even married, so like 20 years ago, 21 years ago, and he wanted to do something science fiction. At one point he met with Star Wars before the sale and ILM pitched him some art and I always was like, I feel like doing something original is better and more in your wheelhouse, but he's such a huge fan that I think it was interesting to him and it never worked out and then we went and did Man of Steel, so we kind of put it aside, but I think working on DC all those years and like kind of building those worlds really prepared us to do this because it all is seeped. I think all the details and the Easter eggs and we created three different languages for the film and we have all this iconology which you'll see when we go to art department that's all wholly original, so I think it's super exciting to not owe anything to anything, and also it's a little bit more I think heavy lifting we need to do to show the world what this is because it is original IP and there's so very little original IP out there, but I think that's what the challenge and the excitement was for us.
Wesley Coller: Yeah, yeah, and I think that you'll hear us say it a lot…I think for us part of what makes this so exciting too is it is a giant world-building endeavor. There's so many layers, there's languages, there's backstory and histories for all these different characters and worlds, but I think they're all rooted and anchored in this really amazing story that is character driven and about, you know, it's this few versus many. It's this really accessible story and I think in the production design you'll see and I don't want to spoil any of it, but the world, the entry point to the world as viewers is really it's an open door. I think you'll see a lot of things that feel tangible and organic and accessible that then lead us into this bigger science fantasy world.
Deborah Snyder: And I think the groundedness like having this big set and …everything that we had in Santa Clarita which felt, you know, it was all about the earth and we grew 10 football fields of wheat that we harvested and like the wheat was a problem in and of itself because we had a really cold spring so when we thought the wheat would be ready the wheat wasn't growing as fast, it didn't turn gold as fast and we had to keep changing the schedule based on the wheat. But I think that combined with, you know, you'll see here a lot of green screen because it's more the space stuff but it definitely like because we have so many physical sets it definitely grounded the movie I think a lot more than some of the other things that we've done that have been like wholly more green screen. We kind of had and we started shooting April 18th so we've been shooting quite a while and we just left Santa Clarita to come to the stages. Santa Clarita was challenging because it was so it's like 10 degrees hotter out there and it was such a hot summer that just with the masks and everything, living in this shooting in this COVID world, we would have to break every two hours and all this just to keep people safe in the heat and it was dirty and dusty but it was also that's what made it I think give it that feeling.
I would hope for a theatrical release of some sort like you did for Army of the Dead
Wesley Coller: It would be really great. It's fun just to be doing something of that scope and scale and world-building. And to be doing it, like Debbie said, to be doing it in a wholly original space where the sky's the limit. And as you guys know, Zack loves his world-building and loves that bit of the nuances of story and character and creating these universes for them to traverse. It's been a lot of fun. And like Debbie said, I think the other important part was rounding a fair amount of it in a practical environment. Because then, as you can see in the farming community.
Well, it seems like things are trending towards more virtual production and stuff. And so the practical is like the exception. It was weird, such a big push for that a while back. And everyone was like, "Everything's practical." But now it's like, "Everything's virtual in the volume."
Deborah Snyder: By the way, we did look at the volume.And it just requires so much upfront. And for what Zack wanted to do, there wasn't one big enough. And for us to build the size that we needed for an area that wasn't permanent, it was going to just cost so much money. And then it's like, we kind of know how to do this location green screen thing dialed in. So I think at the end of the day, it was going to be too much of a compromise to do the volume. It was better for us.
If he's wanting to do more shallow depth of field and everything, it's kind of weird to do that all almost like simulate that instead of when you can get actually in camera.
Deborah Snyder:He's built new lenses for this one too. He built these anamorphic Leica. He took a part of the Leica. And now, because Leica doesn't have an anamorphic lens, and he has these beautiful anamorphic lenses that he built, like six of them. He's really become, like I think, I said “you're never going to go back.” I don't see, you know, he was a DP in the commercial world. And then I think like they wouldn't let him at first and then the movie's got too big. And now, like coming back to his roots is amazing.
Wesley Coller: Yeah, and going full circle to what you're saying though. The nice thing is, as you saw in that though, and you'll see in the art, is that we're able to do so much practical. Get it so the environments can be grounded in reality. But then also there's no lack of scope and scale and giant worlds as well. So it's a really nice balance.
Deborah Snyder: And [the Veldt set] was practical inside and out, so. Yeah...This is all the way up. This is our long house. We make furniture for the inside of it. This is the grainery, which is this building here, which also had a practical inside. And then some of these were people's houses. So when we did a scene inside one of the houses we were there. Inside. And then we blew up some of it. It's a disaster now. We're going to do an “art of” book, and then Zack has been taking a lot of portraits on his Leica, almost like what we did for Justice League where then we did that thing in Dallas.. a couple of them were in Vanity Fair. He's been doing it since we started shooting, so he has like 4,000 of them. So, we're hoping... we're just figuring out who... We're going to do a book on that. The cast is so international and the fans are so international that.
Is Jimmy practical or CGI?
Deborah Snyder: He's a combination. We had someone at a - Anthony Hopkins does his voice. But we had someone on set do his moves - we would play Anthony's voice and he would move, so that was kind of fun. He's practical. but he has green screen elements. He is like hollowed out neck and arms. So we had a real person. we filmed with part of the suit, but part of the suit is green screen. He's really tall. Like how-- He's 6'4", 6'5", maybe. So about that, we felt that tall. And these bounty hunters are really fun, practical. And we had lots of characters in our draw
Zack has been working on this so long... sketching and working on ideas, is there a notebook presentation or something?
Deborah Snyder: The way he works is he . We had a pitch when we pitched Netflix because it's not cheap, all of this building. And it's original IP. So people want to see. So we had a whole-- We had original sketches, and then we had a lot of tear. And then we did a big-- I'm with the creator. God, we had art that filled the sound stage. And then like-- He'll do the first-- We blew it up. It's like, this is probably 1/4 of the amount of art.
Wesley Coller: I was going to say, that's like 150 images that we have. And at that point, we moved into all original art. Like, this is the world. This is our universe.
Deborah Snyder: And he does all the storyboards. He storyboarded the whole world for this one. Yeah.
How quickly does he bring a concept person in so he can create that for pitches and stuff?
Deborah Snyder: When we're... before we pitch. And then we bring someone in to create a deck. And then-- because I think the visual style is-- you're buying into the world, right? As much as you are the spectacle of it. But what's interesting, because I think sometimes sci-fi-- and he prefers science fantasy to science fiction. But he-- a lot of times, it's overly complicated with the technology. And this is more the backdrop of where we are. And it's really, I think, a very human heartfelt. To me, that's what I like about it. And Kora is like this hero, anti-hero...she has this mysterious past that catches up to her.
Wesley Coller: Her mysterious past will be in the story. So what's kind of cool is you have a simple story. But then there's all this palace intrigue. And all this other story that we find out in flashbacks.
This is the story that you just kept coming back to? You just kept watching him come back to it?
Deborah Snyder: He kept coming back. He originally worked on it with Kurt Johnston. And then we brought in Shay [Hatten]. And the three of them worked on the script together. And yeah, it's been years. But he has a lot of these that have been around. I was like, it's kind of a matter of time, but it's a good time for things. And it seemed to be a good time for this.
Did it seem like one that he thought based on his ion was definitely going to happen. Because obviously, you've got a ton of things.
Deborah Snyder: Yeah, I felt like the story is really, I think, great. I always like female protagonists. But it also has all these other-- it's a whole ensemble cast of people. So I don't know. I also like seeing people's flaws and how they're maybe at a lower place and how they're lifted up at the end.
Wesley Coller: And this starts to speak to two, like in our world, the Imperium technology, although it's very futuristic for us, from our point of view, their technology has existed for 100 years or whatever. So even though it's this future tech, it's very much to them something that's been around for a while. So the patina and the aging.
Deborah Snyder: Well, there's the notion that after the royal family's death, everything became, there wasn't an ex-formality or they didn't try and advance, they just, they were war machines. So that's, everything was very practical. And they let, you'll even see with the costumes, the way they looked and then the way they currently look, it's like they still have all the detail, but it's just not taken care of like it was when the king was alive. All of that kind of gets lost, that appreciation of the art of everything.
Is there any single complete ship set or is it all split up between components?
Deborah Snyder: So this would be a hangar that would have many drop-ships. It will be extended, we built a section of it and it's very large we have an interior here on this side.
Wesley Coller: And we built this one three-quarters of the way practical on the inside and then we finished out a separate one that is the completely practical cockpit we've slowly just as we've gotten deeper into the show started to dress in a little bit more of the cockpit to allow us to get closer to it because originally we weren't ever getting, you know, we've kind of moved our actions getting closer and closer to the front there and then uh but so we've got this so now there's a partial finish cockpit in this one but exterior and three-fourths of the way inside are all built and then we have a fully practical interior.
Is this the same thing or another ship that's going to be the fully functional interior?
Wesley Coller: Yes, this is the fully functional interior of this one here
Deborah Snyder: And this they took off because this moves this ship moves outside tomorrow but we shot it in this scene and then it'll go somewhere else and this becomes something else. It’s interesting with the sets because we build them and then they're gone and then we're building something else like more so I feel like we've had things stay longer but there's such a variety of places and set pieces that they keep moving.
Is there since you're doing both [movies at the same time] are you doing it back to back or are you doing mixing the scenes or?
Deborah Snyder: We mixed it so like all the ship stuff is the same all the Veldt stuff was on Veldt, so kind of shooting it like it was one thing. Well it also it's chronologically, too, right so you can't go back you want to shoot everything. Veldt is very different because we go through all the stages of the wheat and then there's a battle that takes place in the second movie that it's the fight for Veldt basically. And it gets destroyed and destroyed so you gotta make sure you kind of shoot all of it. Bbut we didn't want to like go there and go here sometimes we had to go to the stages so we could dress the trenches and we had to dig those fields and put trenches in there and stuff like that. So, it's been, I mean, the schedule has been a bit of a nightmare I think for Misha [Bokowski]. Luckily, we've had years of working with her, and she's amazing at scheduling she also knows how Zack works. But just figuring out and then. And COVID is still a thing, like, all of a sudden you're shooting and it's like, you can't build everything there's too much at the same time so you'll see some of the sets, some of the sets we're still building, very much so when we go into the bridge. It is like they're putting it's built and now they're putting all the dressing in there which will take another week I think to finish. If someone if we went down there's nothing to shoot, like because there's like it just makes it really hard - sometimes we can go “okay we can go to here, “ but not always so it's been... And then you have to figure out how to get back and keep it, you know.
Yeah, does Zack's storyboarding process, make it a lot, make it easier to be able to do that or I imagine yeah, doing that logistical insanity.
Deborah Snyder: Yeah, it does. We know exactly what we're shooting. I mean listen, I feel like because our movies are so visual effects heavy you kind of need to do that work. And also he likes to just worry about the performances once it comes. He needs to know the shots. It's been also really fun. Our son, who graduated with his Masters from AFI in directing is directing second unit, so it's such a family affair to have Eli here with us. And we've been, you know, at coffee they talk about what he's doing, because Zack likes shooting the action, but sometimes we just run out of time, or it's a tricky stunt that takes too long for us to do on main unit. So his work has to fit exactly into our work. And like over coffee they would sit and they talk about the shots and he'll go up to Dodie [Dorn] the editor and they'll look at the film, everything's been fitting really nicely and cool. I mean, we had Damon Caro who was deg the action that made sense for years, but I think there's an intimacy right now I think between the two of them that like it's seamless. And then, you know, like the shots just fit, it’s super cool.
I know Zack and Damon had a lot of the shorthand.
Deborah Snyder: Yeah, and he came on, he was at the beginning, Freddy [Bouciegues] kind of took over. But still a lot of our same guys that we've used a lot of our same team and Damon designed a bunch of the fights, and then had to go because he was working with Jason [Momoa] on See, so he left to do that and then we have Freddie, who we've worked with also.
And what’s this [giant green screen head] over here?
Deborah Snyder: [There’s some technology] in the medical field and in the AI world going on here. It's not something that's a big story point but it's something again I think for him it's like all the details of thinking about this of like make it more believable give it more layers and all of that…By the way, all of these sets are like part of the ship. Okay. So there's all I mean we couldn't the ship is since it's so big we have different areas.
Wesley Coller: up here this is if you're controlling this thing you got your periscope and so this gives you your left right your forward and back so these move in time with when you're doing that, you know, they're popping at the same time. And like Debbie said there's also the center column spins so when the scenes are happening you can feel the room moving with you. And you'll see as as he's been that if you look at any of the keyboards or the buttons they all have our Imperium language, which is a fully created, you know, written in the language yeah so you'll see the in world like all those things exist.
Oh yeah, it's even on the keyboard.
Wesley Coller: Yeah it's in place key... the markers on the keyboard so it's just that way
Are you going to publish a translation guide for people to…?
Wesley Coller: with the Kryptonian stuff I think we ended up going out there with some of that so I wouldn't be surprised if we find some opportunities to put that out there because I think uh right now we have currently three written languages we're working on a fourth right now for and then there's some spoken language stuff, so it's really fun to have that amount of depth within these creative universes.
I’ve always appreciated how Tolkien’s entry point into fiction in the first place was through language and how he believed in order to describe something fictional you need new words to do it in the first place He called it sub-creation and I think it was so cool to see like it's like the ability to describe something with new words creates a new and whole new world it's not just using it's not wrapping something in our language it's a new language
Wesley Coller: exactly and yeah and there's one that's a little closer to a one-to-one on some of the translations but there's one that has this completely other set of rules that you have to kind of… and it came with a guide they're like here's the line and I went to open the one-to-one - what I thought would be the one-to-one guide sheet - and all of a sudden it was like the philosophy of language I was like even cooler
There we go, that's cool.
Deborah Snyder: Zack wanted this to be lit by practicals, so that's like the whole, his whole design, the lighting style of this film.
Is there a big difference in the number of sets being built for this compared to anything else? I know for Army of the Dead was mostly just one location, but for this obviously I'm seeing a lot more. I don't know how that compares.
Wesley Coller: Yeah, we've got a fair amount of sets. And again it's been a combination of having the big Veldt, practical location to go to, and then we shot that out at Blue Cloud Movie Ranch in Santa Clarita, and then we were also out at Gillibrand in Simi Valley for another portion of outdoor work and location work. But yeah, in of sets we've got this stage, the two we just walked through, the four we just walked through, and this. And we've been constantly sort of going, and [the Dreadnought] is like our final big set in this space, and we're starting to get into our final set builds. I would have to do a count, but it's been a large volume of sets to give us a lot of the interiors and some of those different exotic locations that don't exist out in the world.
And what would be normal on something of this scale?
Wesley Coller: I would have to do a count to do a comparison, but we're on the higher end of all the sets. We're comparable with some of our other large buildings in of sets we built…it feels like it's five stages, and each one's had multiple incarnations, so, nearing 20.
Because this is something that I would assume that this would be an easier thing to say "You know what? We don't need to build the whole thing." But you can photograph that, though.
Wesley Coller: And for Zack, like Debbbie, he wanted it lit practically. So you could do a CG version, and in this day and age, you could do a really great CG version of this. But for Zack to be able to be in the space and work with the lighting and work with the shadows and find those nooks and crannies for people to pop in and out of, it just gives you so much more on the day to work with. And I think that there's something to be said for those tactile things that you can walk on and touch and move around and in between. And by the way, you'll see when we go to this other stage, it's a green screen environment for the distant ship parts you'll see, but you'll see that the floor is practical and all the things they're interacting with, even on this cool tilting floor we'll be on. It's like as much as we can have hands-on and have them interacting with stuff, it just creates that much more of a believability in the movement and the action.
Well, it's so cool seeing all the influences from the art room and then hopping to each set. You see all of it in the art room, but then we see it's like a very Battlestar Galactica with the submarine-esque ship bridge and then the hallway, that reminds me of Alien, tangible, not quite claustrophobic, but it's so cool how there's all these touchstones of, there's some kind of a Dune vibe to some of it and it's so cool to see.
Wesley Coller: I think just like anything, there's those sort of tropes or ideas or things that feel familiar. I think it's fun to have fun with ideas and things that are wholly original but also aware of the world around them.
How far apart will the movies be released? Do you guys have a say in it? (note, the movies have since received December 22, 2023 and April 19, 2024 release dates)
Deborah Snyder: We’re talking about it. Because we’re also planning, you know, we want to figure out what we’re doing like with like a big VR experience and what is it and what are the timing of all those things? And then our books, I always think about that. They have a pretty robust publishing program. You know, novelizations and graphic novels and some other stories in the universe that we could start building up where the world is. So we’re just starting to talk to all the book people and the experiences people and everything like that.
