SDCC: Brad Pitt enlists for WORLD WAR Z; first mass-scale zombie blockbuster!
Will it be the last word on the zombie genre? Paramount pushing forward with a large-scale tentpole adaptation of Max Brooks' zombie apoclaypse.
We questioned yesterday if Paramount would finally get their act together over adapting Max Brook's large scale, zombie-apoclaypse novel World War Z now that Joel Silver has the futuristic terminator style World War X in development at WB, and wouldn't ya know... some big news hit the con last night. Brooks revealed just hours ago that he got the call from the studio letting him know that Brad Pitt is now officially attached to lead, Quantum of Solace helmer Marc Foster will still direct, and the movie is being planned as a Summer 2012 blockbuster. 
Image on the right is director Marc Foster's commissioned concept artwork for the movie.
Image on the right is director Marc Foster's commissioned concept artwork for the movie. That secures it'll be one of Paramount's biggest releases of that year, and we would expect it to have a hefty budget - especially as original screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski said a while ago it would be the first mass scale zombie movie, which we are told will absolutely live up to it's title. Matthew Michael Carnahan has since provided a re-write.
The novel, which Ive read and really enjoyed revolves around a researcher for the U.N. who interviews survivors of a zombie-human war from countries all over the world some ten years after the crisis. His mission is to piece together a first-person account of the aftermath the war left on the world, and it's the most detailed and intense work of zombie fiction I think I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Though we expect the narrative style to be changed for the movie. Could this project be the last word in zombie films? We hope so. Though Brooks also revealed that Paramount had bought the rights to "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks" graphic novels, so we wouldn't count on it.