Variety reports paramount recently announced they will be renewing the option to make World War Z, the big screen adaptation of Max Brooks’ best-selling post-apocalyptic novel about a worldwide infestation of flesh-eating zombies. Filmmaker Marc Forster is developing the project, while Brad Pitt’s Plan B company is producing.
World War Z tells the tale of a researcher for the U.N. Postwar Commission who interviews survivors all around the globe in order to put together a post-mortem on the war that destroyed nearly every country. As with most zombie fiction, dig a bit deeper and there’s also some keen social commentary on government ineptitude and American isolationism hidden within the pages.
Brooks — son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft — told MTV.com that Matthew Michael Carnahan is doing a rewrite of Michael Straczynski’s adapated script for Paramount. The script had gone through some changes since its first appearance in 2007, Straczynski even hoped at one point that the film would begin production by the start of 2009. This was stopped short, however in June 2009, when Marc Forster told an interviewer that the film would be delayed, stating that the script still needed a lot of development and is “still far from realization”.
This news should be a breath of fresh air to those who thought World War Z was lost and gone forever.
[...] finally enjoying the fruits of his labors because he has NEVER been more popular. It seems like a new zombie film or five is coming out every year, and while most of them are no-budget bloodfests, I see nothing [...]