Zombie sequel World War Z 2 takes a step closer to actually, happening, as Edward Berger signs on to direct Brad Pitt. It’s only taken 13 years to get here…
Update: Roughly six months after Paramount announced its plans to drag World War Z 2 out of the archives, along comes a further sign of life.
Brad Pitt has formally signed on to reprise his role as protagonist Gerry Lane, while Edward Berger, director of Conclave and All Quiet On The Western Front, is set to call the shots.
Pitt has remained doggedly committed to making a sequel to 2013’s World War Z, in which – as the title implies – the entire planet was assailed by a zombie plague. There were plans for David Fincher to take the reins for a while, but that eventually fell apart due to budgetary concerns.
Deadline has the exclusive on the latest development, which also states that Dennis Kelly – the British writer of TV’s Utopia, which Fincher was going to adapt into a US show at one stage – is set to pen the script.
Pitt and Berger have recently collaborated on a thriller called The Riders, due out at some point from A24, and the pair got on so well that they’ve decided to make World War Z their next project.
When will it emerge? Will the film acknowledge the chasm of time between the original and the sequel, 28 Years Later style? We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
Our original story follows…
17th April 2026: With Skydance having spent billions on buying Paramount, the merged company is focused on dusting off its biggest franchises to make back a few dollars.
Paramount Skydance, to give its proper new name, has already announced that Top Gun 3 is now in official development after four years of vagueness.
It’s also said that World War Z 2 is finally going to happen – 13 years after the original.
At this stage, there’s little more to the story than the announcement itself, which emerged from Paramount’s panel at CinemaCon (via Fangoria). It marks a renewed effort to get a sequel to the 2013 zombie hit going, though, after multiple false starts. The Orphanage director JA Bayona was attached to direct a follow-up at one stage; then David Fincher replaced him. Then it all went rather quiet.
World War Z was quite an odd film when you stepped back and looked at it. It was nominally based on Max Brooks’ source novel, but took little more than the premise – that of a global zombie outbreak. Where the book was an epistolary, taking in the unfolding disaster from multiple perspectives, the film, directed by Marc Forster, turned it into a star vehicle for Brad Pitt.
Read more: World War Z 2 | The zombie sequel that never was
Pitt starred as the improbably-named Gerry Lane, who travels the globe looking for a means of preventing civilisation from descending into cannibalistic mayhem. Production on the film was, bluntly, an utter nightmare, with whole chunks of the film scrapped and a new, smaller-scale ending added. Written by written by Damon Lindelof, it involved a fizzy drinks machine located in Wales.
Despite all this, World War Z was a hit, perhaps helped by its PG-13 rating. There was talk at the time of a trilogy. If that’s still the case, then we can expect the third film to emerge at some point in the 2040s.
We’ll bring you more on World War Z as we get it.
