Zack: I kind of have to make it up because there was no visuals, there was no anything. I just said, "Hey, I want to make this sci-fi movie," and they were like, "Oh, that sounds cool."

Charlie Hunnam (as Kai): You might want to hold on.

Zack: Hi, I'm Zack Snyder, the director of Rebel Moon. I'm here to show you a side of filmmaking that fans rarely get to see: the pitch itself. The reality of its origins was when I was at film school, I had a class in actually pitching. I came in with this idea for a sort of Dirty Dozen, Seven Samurai in space concept I had. I really pitched it really simply, just exactly in those terms, a space movie about a village of farmers who get visited by this ambiguous enemy and that the villagers have to gather soldiers to help them fight. And the idea was that the soldiers that they found were all criminals or had a jaded past and it was a story of redemption.

Djimon Hounsou (as General Titus): We are beyond redemption.

Sofia Boutella (as Kora): What about revenge?

Kurt: The early conversations were in 1997. He always knew that I wanted to be a writer and was working towards that. Even when we were working in commercials, he was a director in commercials and I was his first AD. We were flying back from Cape Town to London on a long flight and he leaned over and was like, "What's your favorite movie?" And I was like, "Let me think about that." And he's like, "Mine was Star Wars." And I was like, "Oh yeah. That one's probably up there." I said, "I think mine's Seven Samurai." And he said, "Wouldn't it be cool if one day we can make a movie like Seven Samurai in outer space?" I was like, "Yeah, that'd be cool. But right now we're shooting commercials, so I don't know how we're going to do that, but yeah, that'd be awesome." He wanted to try to do it as a Star Wars movie.

Zack: And it was before the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney that I went down and met with Kathleen Kennedy to pitch them this idea of this exact story, but set in the Star Wars universe. At the time, I just felt like Star Wars was in sort of this limbo state. They had done the prequels and I just pitched them this idea sort of set in the era right before New Hope, which would include all the old school Star Wars hardware, AT-ATs, star destroyers, what have you. And it was met with I felt like a lot of enthusiasm, but then after the sale, Disney had its own idea about what to do going forward. And Lucasfilm, of course, they had created this whole trajectory for the Star Wars universe. And that's what happened.

Kurt: So there were lots of nos and a lot of kind of walls that got thrown up. But a good story is a good story, and Zack really persevered.

Zack: The story had quite an evolution, and I think that's what happened when I pitched it to Netflix. I already had such a clean take on how it worked. It was really easy to communicate not only the visuals, but sort of the dramatic story arcs of each character. The way I pitched it to Netflix was we had just finished Army of the Dead and we were talking about what we were going to do next, whether it was going to be a sequel to Army the Dead, which I still want to do by the way. I said, "Maybe instead of Army of the Dead, would you guys be interested in this sci-fi epic that I want to do about a village of farmers that gets visited by this enemy army from another planet that's in this area of the galaxy, colonializing everything?" And they were like, "That sounds really cool."

Shay: I came onto the script when it was still intended to be a single movie, but they'd already written about 90 pages of it. I think I immediately was just letting my brain run wild with everything that I knew he would find and all the cool alien designs he would feature in. And for me, it was really just about trying to service the visual canvas he was going to speak on as best I could.

Zack: I didn't have really any art for it, but they were very intrigued by the scale, the potential action of this village having to defend itself against this massive army.

Shay: The thing I'm most excited about in Part Two is that I feel like it's really where we get all the emotional pay-offs that we're setting up in Part One. Because if the first movie is more of this space adventure and rounding up the team, the second movie is a war film. It's tragic and violent and gritty and sad, but ultimately thrilling. I'm excited for people to just see that different tone that we kind of get to bring out in the second half of the story.

Ray Porter (as Hickman): I don't want no trouble.

Sofia Boutella (as Kora): We're not here to bring any.

Staz Nair (as Tarak): Are you ready?

Warriors: Yeah!

Zack: In the end, the idea is king. If you're passionate about it, if you believe in it, and if you understand it, I feel like you have a great chance of getting someone else to see it through your eyes. My main advice is just love the idea, love the thing that you have to talk about. Your passion for the thing is the highest commodity of the product before it exists. It's going to take every ounce of effort that you have to take the thing off the page and actually make it exist. Passion and enthusiasm, really in the end, is the fuel that makes anything happen.

Djimon Hounsou (as General Titus): The time has come for all that you love. Protect each other and show them no mercy.

Zack: Thanks so much for watching. For more stories about the universe of Rebel Moon, be sure to check out Tudum.com.