Brad Pitt’s 2013 zombie-apocalyptic action horror movie World War Z has a huge fan following and the movie is now streaming on Netflix. Directed by Marc Forster, World War Z claimed the top spot of the highest-grossing zombie movie of all time. For fans, the movie would be worthwhile with immaculate action sequences and the apocalyptic vibe with the inherent thrill makes it one of the most rewatchable movies in the genre.
Brad Pitt Is Proud Of World War Z
World War Z is one of the select movies of Brad Pitt’s career that the actor is immensely proud of. Despite tough theatrical competition with Henry Cavill starrer Man of Steel, World War Z managed to make a mark at the box office collecting a stunning $540.5 million at the global box office while claiming the title of highest-grossing zombie movie of all time.
“It’s a monster of a film,” Pitt told USA Today in 2013 during his promotional tour of the movie. “Listen, I’m pretty proud of this film,” he continued, adding, “I’ve really enjoyed especially this last six months, getting back in there and fixing it.”
But playing Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator stuck in the middle of a raging worldwide pandemic of rabid zombies, Pitt says, the name of his character was not up to his liking. “Gerry Lane, one of the worst names in film ever. It was appropriate. I don’t know why it’s appropriate. Gerry with a ‘G’. He’s the anti-action hero. It’s an anti-action hero name,” he joked.
Director Marc Forster, who has Quantum of Solace to his credit described Pitt’s character as someone “who has special skills and has been in war zones, and crisis was his background. But at the same time he’s this everyman.”
On top of the action and constant trill, the movie also has quite an emotional undertone, the typical family bonding emotional moments in a disaster or an apocalyptic movie but in this case, it was enough to give direction to the narrative challenging the hero. With the success of the movie, there was a series of discussions about a sequel with Pitt returning to his role.
Will there be a World War Z Sequel?
There was a huge uproar among fans demanding a sequel for World War Z. Pitt was also quite enthusiastic about the project that was in the near development at Paramount Pictures.
“We’re we’re certainly talking about it, yes,” Pitt told Variety in 2013. “We’re like we got we have so many ideas on the table from the time we spent just to developing this thing and figuring out how the zombie worlds work we have so many ideas and so much information that we think we got a lot of stuff to mind from you or two but so we’re going to do our best and see, uh, see what we get out of it we got to get the script right first to determine if we go further,” he added commenting on the potential sequel.
With that note, the project was close to becoming a reality bringing J.A. Bayona to direct the movie from a script by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. However, Bayona’s exit from the project in 2016 citing scheduling conflicts propelled the studio to book masterful director David Fincher who has previously collaborated with Pitt in his 1999 cult classic Fight Club.
Despite moving on to pre-production with a revised script by Dennis Kelly, Fincher’s proposed $200 million budget for the film closed the chapter for the sequel for good as China, one of the driving forces of global box-office revenue, banned zombie films.
Later, when Pitt joined Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood for which he won an Oscar, the last remaining hope was diminished. However, the story, according to the actor, was top-notched, “Ooh…it was good. It was really good. We had a really strong story, which [Fincher] shepherded. The things he had planned for it just haven’t been seen before,” he told Collider in 2019.
Also, it is worth noting that, despite a seemingly huge box-office collection of $540 million, the movie barely made a dent for the studio as according to Deadline, an expensive reshoot (the final 40 minutes), skyrocketed the budget up to $270 million with an additional estimated $160 million for marketing cost reveals that the movie was not profitable.
But that’s no reason to ignore the first film, it is still a fine rewatch to enjoy the weekend if you are looking for thrills in a zombie narrative.
Stream World War Z on Netflix.
