Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon will be Netflix's biggest 2023 movie, and the streaming service subtly confirmed this expectation. After everything that happened with Justice League, Zack Snyder left Warner Bros. behind and struck up a new partnership with Netflix. The collaboration between the popular director and the world's biggest streaming service already delivered one hit with Army of the Dead, but Rebel Moon is meant to be another franchise starter for the pair. The established success of a Zack Snyder Netflix original movie and the long-awaited nature of a story originally conceived to be a Star Wars movie has made expectations for Rebel Moon very high.
After Netflix released the first Rebel Moon footage and confirmed the film's December 2023 release date, anticipation continues to rise. The footage highlights Zack Snyder's sci-fi epic and the cast headlined by Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, and Djimon Hounsou. Thanks to Snyder's passionate following and the success of Army of the Dead, it has been thought that Rebel Moon could be one of Netflix's biggest releases ever. This projection by fans has now been confirmed to be in line with what Netflix believes a new Zack Snyder movie should perform.
Rebel Moon's Release Date Is Used For Netflix's Biggest Original Movies
It is no coincidence that Netflix gave Rebel Moon a December 22, 2023 release date. The pre-Christmas release window is what Netflix has established as the time frame for when its biggest original movie of the year will release. Netflix first saw how popular titles released around this time could be in 2018 with Bird Box. Sandra Bullock's thriller was released days before Christmas and became Netflix's biggest original movie ever, at the time, with 282 million hours viewed. 2021's Don't Look Up and 2022's Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery replicated this success, earning 359 million and 273 million hours viewed respectively.
Between Bird Box, Don't Look Up, and Glass Onion, three of Netflix's four biggest movies ever were released in the mid-to-late December window. Rebel Moon's December release date is a sign that Netflix has immense faith in Zack Snyder's movie to be 2023's biggest original movie. It is an understandable bet on Netflix's part thanks to the blockbuster nature of the movie and Zack Snyder's dedicated fans, which could combine over the holidays when people are off work to drive Rebel Moon's viewership up the streamer's all-time charts and possibly break a few records along the way.
Why Rebel Moon Will Be A Hit For Netflix & Zack Snyder
Netflix and Zack Snyder making the assumption that Rebel Moon will be a hit is not a surprise. For as polarizing as his movies have been at times, Snyder routinely delivers films that, at the very least, ignite strong conversations on top of attracting people to watch them. Army of the Dead was a fun zombie action movie from the director, and it performed well enough (78 million hours viewed in the first 28 days), but it was far from being one of Netflix's biggest original movies.
Rebel Moon is a return to the type of massive scope that Snyder has a strong sense of capturing and is attracting to audiences on a grand scale typically. December has become a great place for sci-fi blockbusters to become box office hits, as Avatar: The Way of Water, Star Wars, and Aquaman have proven in recent years. The idea that audiences are hungry for these types of movies applies to Rebel Moon, especially since it will be even more accessible to viewers through a streaming service. So if Rebel Moon really is Zack Snyder's version of Star Wars, it could have no trouble being Netflix's biggest 2023 original movie.
