Killing a zombie is difficult and, apparently, killing a zombie sequel is even harder. Thirteen years after Brad Pitt starred in the hit zombie adaptation World War Z, the star has finally signed on to make a sequel along with Conclave director Edward Berger.
According to Paramount, plot details are being kept under wraps, but the script will be written by Dennis Kelly (Black Sea).
This has been a long time coming. Shortly after the first World War Z, based on the hit 2006 novel by Max Brooks, grossed over $500 million at the box office, talks of a sequel began. JA Bayona was among the first names attached way back in 2013, and a 2017 release date was set. That didn’t happen, but a few years later, Pitt was pushing hard to get his Fight Club director, David Fincher, to make it. That version actually got pretty far down the line too, until budget issues stopped the project. In the 10 years since that happened, there hadn’t been much news, but with Paramount now under new ownership, and its film division under new leadership, the sequel was treated as a priority. A piece of IP that could be brought back to life.
Pitt has a movie coming out with Paramount this month, Heart of the Beast, and recently finished filming an A24 movie called The Riders, with Berger. According to Deadline, the pair spoke at length during the production about World War Z and, by the end, Berger was ready to make it. His and Pitt’s deals recently closed, hence the news.
As for what the sequel could be, the original film ended with Pitt’s character, Gerry, reunited with his family as a cure for the zombie outbreak was discovered. Maybe we’ll actually get to see a movie about humanity fighting back against a zombie outbreak and turning people back into humans, which is an angle that we rarely, if ever, get to see.
There’s no public timeline on the film, but if the script isn’t done already, it’s going to be a few years. For the first time in a decade, though, this sequel feels like it could finally happen, and if Pitt wants it to, so do we.
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