Zack Snyder's upcoming sci-fi space adventure Rebel Moon seems like it could end up being his longest movie to date. The vast story of Rebel Moon, which will focus on the inhabitants of a colony in a distant galaxy battling an invading army led by Regent Balisarius (Ed Skrein), is Snyder's second big project with Netflix following his 2021 zombie movie Army of the Dead. With Snyder and Netflix hoping for Rebel Moon to build an entire universe to be expanded upon, their shared ambitions for the sci-fi tale are certainly big.

One aspect of Snyder's history as a filmmaker that Rebel Moon could particularly expound on is the runtimes he tends to work with. Zack Snyder has a well-known penchant for long runtimes, with Snyder kicking off his work with Netflix with a lengthy runtime on Army of the Dead at 148 minutes. Snyder's predilection for longer runtimes is also an attribute particularly visible in his superhero films, with Zack Snyder's Justice League the longest comic book movie ever at 242 minutes.

Still, with Rebel Moon's title giving its own plot hints, there is plenty of additional reason to think that it might exceed the runtimes of every other movie in Snyder's filmography. Rebel Moon originally being crafted as a Star Wars movie itself would easily suggest Snyder envisions the film as exceeding two hours. However, the inspirations Snyder is taking for Rebel Moon offer even more evidence in that direction, as does the fact that it will be split into two parts. As a result, there's every reason to believe that Rebel Moon could be Zack Snyder's longest movie ever.

Rebel Moon's Format & Influences Guarantee A Long Runtime


As a two-part story, Rebel Moon has a lot of freedom to have a very extended runtime while being divided into smaller individual parts. Even still, given Snyder's body of work, the two parts of Rebel Moon seem quite unlikely to be two 90-minute halves forming a three-hour whole. It could well be that Rebel Moon's Dune-like two-part release could total three hours individually and comprise a six-hour long total, which Rebel Moon's extended back-to-back shoot could attest to.

Additionally, Snyder having cited Akira Kurosawa and specifically his film Seven Samurai also heavily hints at Rebel Moon's runtime being quite long. Kurosawa is just as closely associated with very long runtimes as Snyder, with Kurosawa movies like Ran coming in at 162 minutes and Seven Samurai totaling 207 minutes. The template of a Kurosawa movie on Rebel Moon as described by Snyder all but openly declares the two-parter will be incredibly long.

Rebel Moon has mostly been covered in terms of its sci-fi elements along with its origins as a Star Wars movie (with Rebel Moon's Star Wars abdication being an improvement.) Still, Rebel Moon's status as a two-part, Kurosawa-influenced epic says plenty about it even without a trailer. When Rebel Moon finally arrives, or at least when both parts do, it already looks like a good a idea to have a whole evening or two set aside for what is likely to be the longest movie of Zack Snyder's career.