‘World War Z’ is being released this Friday (June 21st!) and Paramount’s advertising machine is in full effect! The film is the most expensive zombie film put together to date and quite possibly the most controversial as well.
In this recently released clip, we see the extended scene of Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) trying to get his family to safety. We don’t see a lot of his wife, Karin Lane (Mireille Enos), or his children, Constance Lane (Sterling Jerins) and Rachel Lane (Abigail Hargrove), though we do see Brad’s character pushing them to safety, holding back a door while a group of zombies pound on it, and finally outrunning the infected and getting onto a helicopter that is picking them up just in the nick of time! We also see one of the more iconic scenes that has been mentioned of zombies running off the top of a building trying to catch a helicopter.
Honestly the “suicidal” Lemming zombies is a great touch to have on screen. It really sells the idea of the zombies being mindless creatures that will just run towards their next meal not caring what else is in their way with no humanity left to factor in their own self preservation or mortality.
With the film being massivelyover budget due to a slew of lengthy re-shoots (after already going beyond the time allotted to film the movie), a rewrite of the ending by Damon Lindelof, and the source material only seeming to use the name of the book and not much more – this movie may have problems.
The flip side though is that the movie does look REALLY good and has huge star power (let’s be honest here, Brad Pitt tends to sell blockbuster movies.) Early reviews have all been positive to date, and the idea of the book may be fully realized if World War Z ends up as a trilogy as it will be a way to tell different stories from survivors just like in Brook’s novel. The movie has a lot of potential as long as it can get over it’s $200 million price tag and over the stigma from fans of the novel who won’t be getting what they’ve read on page.
While I’m excited for the movie (as long as I keep mentally renaming it ‘Brad Pitt’s Big Budget Zombie Film’) and am looking forward to the it, what do you think? Are you looking to seeing ‘World War Z’ this weekend? Have zombies over saturated the market or was ‘The Walking Dead’ the gateway horror fans everywhere needed to see a return of big budget horror?