Since moving to Netflix, Zack Snyder has been busier than ever. The filmmaker is promoting Rebel Moon before its release later this month and preparing the second chapter of the space opera, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t ready to craft his next epic.
Per THR, Snyder is returning to a story he once created for Warners Bros. that he now has the rights to again. Blood and Ashes is back at Zack Snyder’s home, and this could be one of his wildest projects ever.
Originally planned as a sequel to 300 and 300: Rise of an Empire, Blood and Ashes is a film focusing on the relationship between Alexander the Great and his second in command, Haphaestion. The project is described as a “gay love story that was also an ancient Greek war epic.”
Blood and Ashes was one of the last projects Snyder worked on before officially leaving WB, and he wrote it partially while filming Netflix’s Army of the Dead. With the subject matter and Snyder’s rocky relationship with the studio, THR says Warner Bros. “ultimately didn’t go for it.”
“We got the rights back, so we can make if we want it,” Snyder said during an interview for THR. “I don’t know what the marketplace is for an incredibly homoerotic, super violent, super sexual movie. But maybe it’s perfect.”
After crash landing on a moon in the furthest reaches of the universe, Kora (Sofia Boutella), a stranger with a mysterious past, begins a new life among a peaceful settlement of farmers. But she soon becomes their only hope for survival when the tyrannical Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) and his cruel emissary, Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), discover the farmers have unwittingly sold their crops to the Bloodaxes (Cleopatra Coleman and Ray Fisher) – leaders of a fierce group of insurgents hunted by the Motherworld.
Tasked with finding fighters who would risk their lives to defend the people of Veldt, Kora, and Gunnar (Michiel Huisman), a tenderhearted farmer naive in the realities of war, journey to different worlds in search of the Bloodaxes and assemble a small band of warriors who share a common need for redemption along the way: Kai (Charlie Hunnam), a pilot and gun for hire; General Titus (Djimon Hounsou), a legendary commander; Nemesis (Doona Bae), a master swordswoman; Tarak (Staz Nair), a captive with a regal past; and Milius (E. Duffy), a resistance fighter. Back on Veldt, Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins), an ancient mechanized protector hiding in the wings, awakens with a new purpose. But the newly formed revolutionaries must learn to trust each other and fight as one before the armies of the Motherworld come to destroy them all.
The cast of Rebel Moon includes Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Djimon Hounsou, Anthony Hopkins, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Stuart Martin, Cary Elwes, Corey Stoll, Michiel Huisman, Alfonso Herrera, Ed Skrein, Cleopatra Coleman, Fra Fee, Rhian Rees, Jena Malone, E. Duffy, Charlotte Maggi, Sky Yang, and Staz Nair.
Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire streams on Netflix from December 22nd, 2023, while Part 2: The Scargiver is released on April 19th, 2024.
