Dawn of the Dead was Zack Snyder's first movie as a director and is still widely considered his best. When Army of the Dead hit Netflix, there was a huge amount of excitement among fans, only for that to be dulled somewhat by a bizarre revelation.
Eagle-eyed fans noticed that some of the undead appeared to be robots, and Snyder has since revealed that the plague is somehow alien in nature.
It's a weird direction to take a zombie franchise in and one the filmmaker planned to elaborate on in a now-scrapped animated prequel series revolving around Dave Bautista's character. That's no longer happening, but Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire does supposedly feature a nod to Snyder's planned extraterrestrial explanation.
"Rebel Moon and Army of the Dead definitely can exist in the same universe," he tells ComicBook.com. "I think I've said that, but there's a character in movie one, when they go into - I don't know if I've talked about this - when they go into the bar and there's a Xanadite, the Xanadite is that blue girl with glowing markings on her - she is directly from the Army animated series that we never finished."
"Where they go, where the zombie plague comes from, is a planet they call Xanadu - well, the scientists call it Xanadu because they're big fans of Olivia Newton-John - so they go to Xanadu and the Xanadites, basically where the zombie plague comes from, she's one of them," Snyder adds. "So there's an interdimensional thing they go through, so there is a chance of some weird mashup."
This is very weird and a suggestion Snyder is trying to create a shared world with his non-DC franchise (what his endgame is, if he even has one, remains to be seen).
Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas sounded like a fun time following its announcement, and we still don't know why Netflix pulled the plug on the spin-off. Army of Thieves served as a prequel, of course, but there's been no word on the sequel since Snyder shifted focus to Rebel Moon.
"We did all the scripts and the animatics, and all the voices are recorded," Snyder previously said of the series. "So you could watch it, even in its crazy animatic form - you can watch the whole run."
With Snyder's Netflix projects drawing largely negative reviews, but strong viewership numbers, won't don't know exactly what's next for him and the streamer. Army of the Dead x Rebel Moon, perhaps? We'll see.