NC-17 hit could revive eroticism, says Zack Snyder

In a new sit-down with Variety, Zack Snyder argued that Hollywood has squeezed sex and eroticism out of mainstream movies and said the way to fix it is simple: make a genuine hit that proudly wears an NC-17 rating. The director was responding to a question about why TV seems more comfortable with explicit content than films.

“The same thing that happened with the R-rated movie. So, R-rated movies now have lost their stigma — ‘The Odyssey, ’ ‘Obsession,’ whatever it is. Now, we need an NC-17 movie that’s a hit. If we had an erotic thriller that was NC-17 and it was in IMAX and everyone had to just go do it, maybe that would lift the stigma.”

Snyder also got nostalgic, pointing to the era of glossy, adult thrillers he grew up on — think Body Heat and 9½ Weeks. The director said “eroticism in movies has somehow been stomped out,” contrasting it with a time when major studios routinely backed R‑rated stories for adults.

Part of the reluctance is commercial: an NC-17 rating bars anyone 17 and under from theaters, and many films are trimmed to land an R and widen their audience. One of the most recent high-profile titles to go out NC‑17 was Netflix ’s Blonde.

Rebel Moon edits

Snyder says he’s wrestled with the rating himself. The director’s cuts of Rebel Moon were initially tagged NC‑17 for violence and gore, including sequences involving Ed Skrein as the sadistic Admiral Noble.

He later told CinemaBlend he reworked those cuts to an R because he’d already promised Netflix an R‑rated version, a commitment that prompted multiple edits. Without that promise, Snyder said those director’s cuts would have been his first NC‑17 release.