Well over a decade after the first movie hit theaters, it seems a "World War Z" sequel may finally be in the cards. Maybe. At the very least, it's on the minds of the new regime at Paramount. The studio recently finished its merger with Skydance, meaning that there is new leadership at the top, and they have ambitions to court top talent and take over the box office. That team is led by David Ellison, the founder of Skydance, now Chairman and CEO of Paramount.
After the merger closed, Ellison and
some of the other brass at Paramount held a press conference and, per The Hollywood Reporter, they're looking to make a splash when it comes to big movies. "One of our biggest priorities is restoring Paramount as the No. 1 destination for the most talented artists and filmmakers in the world," Ellison said. "Great filmmakers make great movies."
This is where things get interesting. Naturally, those ambitions extend to obvious stuff like "Top Gun 3." A no-brainer. But the report notes that co-film chief Josh Greenstein name-checked a new "World War Z" movie as a "priority," alongside "Star Trek" and "Transformers. "World War Z 2" was officially canceled by Paramount back in 2019, and it's been pretty quiet on that front ever since. It appears as though noise is going to kick up sooner rather than later. At a time when no specifics are available, it's worth considering that this should probably take the form of a reboot/new adaptation, rather than a sequel.
In the 2013 movie directed by Marc Forster, Brad Pitt plays a former United Nations employee, Gerry Lane, who is forced to travel the world in a race against time to stop a zombie pandemic that is threatening to destroy humanity. It's more of a globe-trotting action movie with zombies in it. Rather crucially, it was also a big hit — albeit with one major caveat.
"World War Z" is the biggest zombie movie ever, having made $540 million at the box office. It's also by far the most expensive, with a monstrous $190 million budget. It was rewritten multiple times with lots of reshoots along the way. It straight-up skirted disaster, and it was nothing shy of a miracle that it became the hit we know it as.
Read more: 10 Completed Movies That Were Never Released
The World War Z Book Remains An Untapped Resource
It's been 12 years, and it's hard to know if this would be an "Avatar: The Way of Water" situation where audiences are frothing at the mouth for a sequel more than a decade after the original. More likely, it's a needless risk. David Fincher was due to direct "World War Z 2" before it fell apart, and if the guy who made "Seven" with Pitt couldn't make it work, it's probably best to let the past die.
More to the point, for those who don't know, the movie was very loosely based on the book of the same name by Max Brooks. Published in 2006, it is "told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand" and is "the only record of the pandemic." It is an oral history of the zombie apocalypse, not at all resembling the movie we got. The book's official synopsis reads as follows:
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of 30 million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. 'World War Z' is the result.
There is a world in which a very different, more faithful adaptation of the book could A) cost far less than $200 million and B) represent the chance to do something different, rather than clinging to the past, hoping for a second miracle. Zombies are still popular. Horror is hot at the box office. Doing another "World War Z" makes sense. It's just that a sequel to the movie we already have might not be what makes sense.
The new "World War Z" movie doesn't have a release date yet, but stay tuned.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
