Rebel Moon producer is pleased Zack Snyder made his Seven Jedi concept an original movie, “F*ck Star Wars!”

When George Lucas wanted to make a nostalgic movie, he made Star Wars. When studios today want to make nostalgic movies, they make more Star Wars. Love him or hate him, it’s admirable that Zack Snyder had an idea for a Star Wars project that he would then turn into a new property. Lucas would cite Akira Kurosawa as one of his many inspirations for his famous space opera. Snyder is now following suit, as even though he didn’t get to make his Star Wars concept, he still takes heavy inspiration from it, as well as Seven Samurai and made the upcoming Rebel Moon films that will be premiering on Netflix later this year.

IndieWire reports that recently, Eric Newman, a producer on Rebel Moon, participated in a Q&A session along with Snyder and company and, according to SlashFilm, he expressed his gratitude that Snyder had decided to stray from making his epic sci-fi an official chapter in the Star Wars universe. “I remember [Zack] calling me at some point, and this has got to be 15 years ago, saying, ‘I’m thinking of doing Seven Jedi, in the Star Wars universe.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool idea.’ […] Then, a few years later, he calls me and goes, ‘You know, I think it could be a television show.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, let’s do this! F*** Star Wars! Let’s do this as a TV show.’ And one of the movies that we talked a lot about way back when, from the beginning, I think we probably bonded over it, was Heavy Metal, which I know most of you know. It was an R-rated science fantasy thing that kind of blew our minds, and you’re going to see that there are a lot of influences, and a lot of that has made its way into this film.”

Zack Snyder’s producing partner and wife, Deborah Snyder, shared the sentiment that the story didn’t have to abide by the brand, so it could do its own thing, “Once, it was a Star Wars film, and I never wanted it to be. I remember, I said to Zack, ‘I just feel like your hands are going to be tied so much in what that IP is,’ even though it kind of lived outside of it. So I was kind of happy when that fell apart, because I always felt like it was better. We learned so much with all our years working with the superheroes and creating those worlds, and to do something now that’s wholly original — we got to do a little bit of that in the world of zombies, and with Las Vegas, but to do something that is fantastical, we say it’s a science fantasy more than science fiction, and to take all those skills that Zack has been honing, and to do something in this space, just seemed really exciting.”