Properly over a decade after the primary film hit theaters, it appears a “World Battle Z” sequel could lastly be within the playing cards. Perhaps. On the very least, it is on the minds of the brand new regime at Paramount. The studio not too long ago completed its merger with Skydance, which means that there’s new management on the prime, and so they have ambitions to courtroom prime expertise and take over the field workplace. That crew is led by David Ellison, the founding father of Skydance, now Chairman and CEO of Paramount.
After the merger closed, Ellison and a number of the different brass at Paramount held a press convention and, per The Hollywood Reporter, they’re trying to make a splash with regards to large films. “One in all our largest priorities is restoring Paramount because the No. 1 vacation spot for essentially the most gifted artists and filmmakers on the planet,” Ellison mentioned. “Nice filmmakers make nice films.”
That is the place issues get fascinating. Naturally, these ambitions prolong to apparent stuff like “Prime Gun 3.” A no brainer. However the report notes that co-film chief Josh Greenstein name-checked a brand new “World Battle Z” film as a “precedence,” alongside “Star Trek” and “Transformers.” “World Battle Z 2” was formally canceled by Paramount again in 2019, and it has been fairly quiet on that entrance ever since. It seems as if noise goes to kick up sooner moderately than later. At a time when no specifics can be found, it is price contemplating that this could most likely take the type of a reboot/new adaptation, moderately than a sequel.
Within the 2013 film directed by Marc Forster, Brad Pitt performs a former United Nations worker, Gerry Lane, who’s compelled to journey the world in a race towards time to cease a zombie pandemic that’s threatening to destroy humanity. It is extra of a globe-trotting motion film with zombies in it. Fairly crucially, it was additionally an enormous hit — albeit with one main caveat.
“World Battle Z” is the most important zombie film ever, having made $540 million on the field workplace. It is also by far the most costly, with a monstrous $190 million price range. It was rewritten a number of instances with a number of reshoots alongside the best way. It straight-up skirted catastrophe, and it was nothing shy of a miracle that it grew to become the hit we all know it as.
The World Battle Z e-book stays an untapped useful resource
It has been 12 years, and it is arduous to know if this is able to be an “Avatar: The Means of Water” state of affairs the place audiences are frothing on the mouth for a sequel greater than a decade after the unique. Extra probably, it is a unnecessary danger. David Fincher was resulting from direct “World Battle Z 2” earlier than it fell aside, and if the man who made “Seven” with Pitt could not make it work, it is most likely finest to let the previous die.
Extra to the purpose, for individuals who do not know, the film was very loosely based mostly on the e-book of the identical title by Max Brooks. Revealed in 2006, it’s “advised within the haunting and riveting voices of the women and men who witnessed the horror firsthand” and is “the one document of the pandemic.” It’s an oral historical past of the zombie apocalypse, under no circumstances resembling the film we bought. The e-book’s official synopsis reads as follows:
The Zombie Battle got here unthinkably near eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, pushed by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors, traveled throughout the USA of America and all through the world, from decimated cities that when teemed with upwards of 30 million souls to essentially the most distant and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of males, ladies, and generally youngsters who got here face-to-face with the dwelling, or no less than the undead, hell of that dreadful time. ‘World Battle Z’ is the consequence.
There’s a world during which a really completely different, extra trustworthy adaptation of the e-book might A) price far lower than $200 million and B) signify the possibility to do one thing completely different, moderately than clinging to the previous, hoping for a second miracle. Zombies are nonetheless in style. Horror is sizzling on the field workplace. Doing one other “World Battle Z” is smart. It is simply {that a} sequel to the film we have already got won’t be what is smart.
The brand new “World Battle Z” film would not have a launch date but, however keep tuned.
