Movie Talk: World War Z

World War Z is a movie that I have been anticipating for years now. For those you don't know World War Z is based on a zombie novel from Max Brooks, who also wrote The Zombie Survival Guide. World War Z is a tale that takes place after zombies wipe out civilization as we know it. It al revolves around a former U.N. worker who was tasked to report on the entire war against the zombies. The story is told from varies points of view through a myriad of interviews with key people during the crisis.

The history of the movie adaptation of this book starts with a bidding war between Leonardo DiCaprio's company and Brad Pitt's company who won. Shortly after director Marc Forster was signed onto the project.  Max Brooks by this point has no creative control over the production of the movie.

Initially the movie was rumored to be release late 2010, but appears now to be p

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ushed back until 2012. Normally delays like this are a bad thing for getting a movie released, but according to Max, the money being spent to just get this movie written is a good sign that a movie will be made. (more on this later)

First the movie was handed to J. Michael Straczynski the man behind the awesomeness that was Babylon 5 to come a screenplay. Now this is a monumental task due to the way the story was told and the epic scale of the story itself. A draft was leaked on the internet and Aintitcoolnews was thoroughly impressed, saying that it could redefine the genera. Recently its come out that the movie has been handed off to a new writer Matt Carnahan who is known for The Kingdom.

Now that I have talked a little what's going on with the movie I want to get into how I feel about the movie. First as much as I want to see this story told on the big screen, realistically I know a single movie isn't going to cut it. There is just too much ground to cover. Even the audio book adaptation as good as it was had to be trimmed down. Maybe breaking the story down into different movies would work, but I am not holding my breath for a Lord of the Rings style trilogy.

With the script in the hands of a write I also worry that the story is being dumbed down and made more popcorn flick-ish. The book while it did a good job one night of seriously creeping me out, wasn't about that type of horror. It was more about the emotional shock of losing the comforts we have gotten used to and being force to fight for survival as the world crumbles around you. It will be a shame of that element is lost to more of action army vs. zombies tales. Any who know the book also know that the army wasn't terribly effective until it became incredibly boring.