World War Z movie FAIL

Gary Whitta introduced choggle pants at a script meeting.

Probably trying to figure out how to dig themselves out of the narrative hole that Lindelof left them in.

“I know, I’ll dig my way out!” - Homer Simpson

Shit, even the Bagger 288 couldn’t dig a good script out of a Lindelof hole.

Hey, I thought the movie was okay-ish. I was just so surprised that
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Segen survives till the end AND keeps on kicking butt

that I barely minded the second half. Maybe she’ll get to do more in the sequel.

Meh, wish we were getting a 28 months later movie instead.

We are, I think. I’ll try to find a link, but I know I’ve heard there’s one at some stage of probably happening.

edit: This is a “this might happen” news item from January, but I’m sure I’ve seen an update more recently also indicating it will probably happen. No guarantees at this point, but people are trying.

I suppose a big budget movie with zombies could be cool. I was so-so on the first one. Waited until I could see it for free and liked it enough to watch until the end, but didn’t say to myself, “I hope they do a sequel!” I will probably wait until the sequel is free.

I feel like I finally saw this movie done right, in the latest episode of Game of Thrones (s5,e8).

Rented the Blu-ray for a buck. Glad I didn’t pay more. It was alright. Pretty middling movie in my opinion. Something you have playing while you check your smartphone at the same time. Did the movie guys essentially just pay Max Brooks for the use of the World War Z title because I didn’t see any content at all from the actual book.

To the last point, apparently. The movie had a very troubled production though, so it’s possible that at some point in the early stages it somewhat resembled Brooks’ work.

From what I remember reading, once it became a leading role for Pitt, any attempt to stick to the book went out the window. There’s no way you are going to have Brad Pitt starring in a movie where he has an almost cameo sized role, and then sell that movie as starring Brad Pitt.

This 2013 Vanity Fair article dishes the dirt on the production issues.

In her revealing report, Holson also speaks to director Marc Forster and Paramount executives Marc Evans and Adam Goodman about the many problems that plagued the set—which included re-writing and reshooting 40 minutes of the film to find a coherent ending—and, most astonishingly, how the budget ballooned to around $200 million.

While closing down the production in Malta, for instance, the wrap-up crew found a stack of purchase orders related to the cast and extras that had been casually tossed into a desk drawer and forgotten; the amount totaled in the millions of dollars. Marc Evans, president of production at Paramount, was shocked. He calls the overages an “unthinkable action” which needed to be addressed immediately. “It was literally insane. Adam [Goodman, president of the Paramount Film Group] and I believed we’d gotten out of Malta good, and I found out we weren’t. That is a nightmare.”

When it came time to watch the director’s cut, Holson reports, the room was silent. “It was, like, Wow. The ending of our movie doesn’t work,” says Evans. “I believed in that moment we needed to reshoot the movie.” After 10 minutes of polite discussion, everyone left. “We were going to have long, significant discussions to fix this,” he recalls thinking.

tl:dr: They had a lot of problems.

Reportedly director Juan Antonio Bayona has bailed from the sequel.

— Alan

Because it just wouldn’t be a WWZ movie without production issues.

Okay, Fincher taking on zombies? I might be interested in seeing that.

Uh yeah, that gets my attention. Still never seen the first movie.

It’s not nearly as bad as many have made it out to be. It’s not great - and it certainly is a poor representation of the stories from the book - but the sheer spectacle of the zombie hordes flowing like a tide of death can be pretty thrilling if you just strap in for a crazy ride.

Curious to see how Fincher deals with this subject; the dude is a master of brutality.

My wife and I watched this for the first time by renting in iTunes and we both enjoyed it very much. The missus is not familiar at all with zombie mythology (she should have watched me played Left 4 Dead years ago!) and so she was pretty excited about the whole premise. I enjoyed the story myself and the zombie horde tide was some spectacular shot. Looking forward to the sequel. When I told missus of the sequel, she’s delighted.

I found it exceeded my expectations as well (though admittedly, they were fairly low. And I haven’t read the book).

It’s also one of the few modern action/horror movies I’ve seen where the third act is not only not a ruinous disappointment, but arguably the best part of the movie.