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Brad Pitt and Marc Forster's 'World War Z' is Back from the Dead?

by Ethan Anderton
March 29, 2011
Source: Deadline

Just last week we learned that the gestating adaptation  of Max Brooks' novel World War Z was in serious trouble. Paramount Pictures was having trouble finding a financing partner to help put up the 125+ million budget, and if the money couldn't be found, the project would be left for dead. At the time an eleventh hour effort was being made to reach out to frequent funding friend David Ellison (of Oracle Corp.) to help get the project off the ground. Now it sounds like those efforts might pay off as Deadline reports talks between Paramount and the financier are "hot and heavy" with production potentially beginning as early as June.

Director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) and actor Brad Pitt are still very much attached to the project which follows the aftermath of a global zombie war 10 years after the conflict, where a researcher for the UN Postwar Commission is interviewing survivors in countries that were decimated by flesh eaters. Sounds a bit like District 9 with zombies affecting the population instead of stranded aliens. Here's the official synopsis:

'World War Z' tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace.

The news couldn't come at a better time as Deadline points out the plethora of zombie-centric projects coming down the road including but not limited to Warm Bodies (which just gained Teresa Palmer), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which might finally have a director), R.I.P.D. (starring Ryan Reynolds and Zach Galifianakis), Zombies vs Robots, Boy Scouts vs Zombies and of course a sequel to Zombieland. That's a lot of undead action , but World War Z should be able to differentiate itself from the pack. Excited?

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