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Rebel Ridge remains one of the most popular Netflix films of the year, overcoming pretty intense competition to remain at the top of the streamer’s charts. However, it wasn’t always a clear path toward making the film. Both a global pandemic and the departure of the film’s star threaten to derail the hit before it ever got made.

According to co-star AnnaSophia Robb, the film’s future was in question nearly from the start. The 2020 pandemic shut down filming until the spring of 2021, at which time much of the cast had to be replaced. Robb joined during this time, but production was soon shut down when Star Wars star John Boyega abruptly left the film due to “family reasons.” “We waited for about a month down [in Louisiana]. We were in this holding pattern to figure out what was going to happen, and then, once that wait was over and everything had been figured out, that’s when I knew I’d be coming back the next year.”

Even once Aaron Pierre replaced Boyega as Terry Richmond, it still took close to a year before filming was back underway in the spring of 2022, nearly two years and a totally different set of leads from what was originally planned. Robb believes the wait made the movie better. “People were like ‘Okay, are we going to make this movie?’ And it became incredibly apparent very quickly that, yes, we were, and that this was the right version that needed to be told all along.”

In addition to becoming a huge hit for Netflix, Rebel Ridge is proving to be a breakout hit for Aaron Pierce in an action movie where the hero avoids taking lives at all costs, so clearly the wait was worth it.

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