Rebel Moon to get 6-hour R-rated director's cuts: Everything we know so far

Kora and the other warriors of Vedlt are back in Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, the second half of Zack Snyder's sprawling sci-fi epic that started with Rebel Moon Part One: Child of Fire that premiered in December 2023. The new film follows Kora, Gunnar, Titus, and more as they prepare to fight against the Motherworld led by Ed Skrein's villainous Atticus Noble.

But if the lengthy four-hour runtime of Rebel Moon parts one and two combined isn't enough to sate your interest in Snyder's expansive world, you'll be happy to know that there is a lot more content on the way. Sometime later this year, Netflix will release the R-rated director's cuts of both films, each one more than three hours long, totaling more than six hours of the Rebel Moon saga.

As for when fans can expect to see the director's cuts, we don't have an exact date yet. Rebel Moon screenwriter Kurt Johnstad told Comic Book that they are coming out this year "for sure." He also hears that they will be released on the same day, so viewers will be able to watch the two new versions back-to-back if they wish and enjoy six hours of "a non-interrupted experience of Zack Snyder."

What can fans expect from the R-rated versions of Rebel Moon Part One and Part Two?

Snyder has spoken to several different outlets about what viewers have in store for them when these new versions are finally released. Talking with The Hollywood Reporter, the director said that these director's cuts are his "catharsis," and they really take viewers on an "alternate journey" of these movies.

Since Netflix seems to have given Snyder carte blanche on his sci-fi epic, why not just make the R-rated versions in the first place? Well, the Justice League director wanted to make PG-13 versions so that younger teens could watch the films with their families. I mean, people were clamoring for that "skip the foreplay" button just a little bit ago, so maybe he's onto something.

In exchange for the PG-13 cuts, Snyder was granted creative freedom for the director's cuts of the movies and according to him, they're more inline with his original vision for the story.

"The director’s cuts really are the alternate universe version of these movies. They’re what I wrote. They’re much more mythological and much more tonally weird and much more the deconstructivist quality of the sci-fi universe that I intended."

While he describes the PG-13 versions as "more earnest," he promises that the new films will have a "very significant R rating" with lots of scenes that fans have never seen before, including "over-the-top sex and violence."

Snyder told UNILAD that they actually filmed alternate takes for several parts of the movie.

"We knew that we were almost doing a foreign language version. You know, you actually knew as we were filming, like, okay, that's for the R rated."

Because of the edgier content, it creates an aura of self-awareness in the movie, "because the violence is so insane, that you're now like, oh, like it, this is the thing that's, that shouldn't exist in the sci fi movie at this scale.”

The extended editions include an alien sex scene, 'scuzzy realism,' Easter eggs, and more

One sex scene in particular involves the full version of that moment where Atticus Noble gets it on with an alien. Fans might recall a scene in the first part, Child of Fire, where Noble starts entertaining a squid-like alien with tentacles, but the camera cuts away before anything gets hot and heavy. Not so, in the R-rated version.

Actor Ed Skrein, who plays Noble, told GamesRadar that he didn't hold back with the scene in question.

"Also, I don't know whether to be worried or excited, because the people at Netflix keep saying to me, 'Have you seen the R-rated cut yet?' and they say, 'Have you seen your alien sex scene yet?' They're like, 'It's crazy. You really went for it, didn't you?' And I'm like, 'I go for it every take and scene, I don't hold back.' So I'm super excited to see that. And I hope I don't become too much of a meme," Skrein told the outlet.

He also says that their original scripts were 179 pages and the first 11 haven't been seen due to the restrictions of the PG-13 rating.

"It is horror. And that was fun to shoot, and I'm excited for people to see that."

Ed Skrein

Star Sofia Boutella, who plays Kora in both movies, promises that eagle-eyed viewers will notice "a lot of Easter eggs" in the new versions because the extended editions provide a full scope of the story that will make certain things click.

And Tarak actor Staz Nair told GamesRadar that the extended versions are grittier and "a lot more scuzzy," with the director's cuts providing more of the "realism" of these harrowing dystopian worlds.

Stay tuned to Netflix Life for more details on the extended cuts of Rebel Moon Part One and Part Two.