Brad Pitt in 'World War Z' and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

With a lot of sci-fi fans looking to the immediate future releases of ‘Hunger Game’, ‘The Avengers’, and ‘Amazing Spider-Man’, it’s easy to overlook the round of great films that are headed our way down the road. Yesterday evening, Collider reported that some solid release dates had been set for ‘World War Z’ and the new ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’ movies.

When we last heard about the adaptation of Max Brook’s zombie novel ‘World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War’, director Marc Forster (‘Quantum of Solace’) was discussing his ideas to spread the source material out into a trilogy of zombie flicks. But for now, we know that we can at least expect the first movie in the summer of next year. Fans of the novel (or just zombies in general) can mark their calendars for June 21, 2013. ‘World War Z’ will star Brad Pitt as a United Nations representative who travels the world seeking a cure for a zombie epidemic. It co-stars Anthony Mackie, Matthew Fox, and Mireille Enos.

Taking a lighter turn from the world being overrun by flesh-eating undead, the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ are also on their way back into theaters in 2013 courtesy of Nickelodeon and Platinum Dunes. There’s not a lot of detail on the latest TMNT movie other than it will be a live-action movie directed by Jonathan Liebesman (‘Battle: Los Angeles’) and written by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec (‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’). There are no actors attached yet, but you can expect the heroes on the half shell to crash into theaters on Christmas Day, 2013. Cowabunga!