World War Z Trailer: Brad Pitt’s dumb kids don’t understand martial law

Written by Vince Mancini / 03.25.13

After being bumped from its original December 2012 release, the

I haven’t read the book, but from what I understand, it’s an oral history of a zombie apocalypse told after the fact. The movie is set during the zombie outbreak, with Brad Pitt trying to find out what caused the zombies to become zombies, while stuff explodes around him as graphs and helpful expository dudes tell us how many people have died and Brad Pitt runs and runs. It all feels very Nic Cage. Have you noticed that in movies, “racing against the clock” always involves a lot of actual racing? They should just hire the world’s foremost scientist, Usain Bolt.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt’s daughter in this may win the son-in-Homeland Memorial Award for being a verbose rube. “Daddy, I’m scared!” Wait, you mean you’re scared of the horde of murderous zombies trying to beat down the door as we cower in this tiny panic room? Gee, what a fresh observation, honey! This changes everything! You’re just the one to lead us out of this mess, we’ll start by declaring you the Empress of Obvioustown.

Read the rest of this entry »

29 Comments TAGS: , , , , , , ,

Writer’s Room: Audiences More Entertaining Than the Movie

Written by Vince Mancini / 11.15.12

Look, we’ve all been there: you’re sitting there watching a mediocre movie, let’s say Spider-Man 3, and on screen, emo Peter Parker is in the midst of shoving Mary Jane down on the floor. The theater is respectfully silent, until a drunk dude in the back says, “Awww, sh*t,” and the entire theater explodes in laughter. Yes, that was something I witnessed, and it was instances such as these, when the audience became the show, that prompted me to ask some of my favorite writers and comedians to share their stories of times when the theater where they were watching a film became far more entertaining than the film itself.

This week’s panel includes some of your old Uproxx pals, as well as Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker from Sh*t My Dad Says/I Suck At Girls/Cougar Town, XOJane Columnist and Twitter’s BoobsRadley Julieanne Smolinski, comedian Jamie Lee, who was just on Conan a few months back, So Close to You author Rachel Carter, and my favorite San Francisco comedians and former Frotcast guests, Alison Stevenson and Leslie Small. Don’t blame any of them for the cutesy chapter headings though, I wrote those. Enjoy!

Read the rest of this entry »

95 Comments TAGS: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Brad Pitt vs. CGI Ant-People Zombies: The full World War Z Trailer

Written by Vince Mancini / 11.08.12

After a trailer for the trailer, a thousand reminders about when the trailer would be (save the date! for our commercial!), and a careful buzz-building period (which in practice just gave us more time to talk trash about how bad and not like the book it looked), the full trailer for World War Z, directed by Marc Forster, loosely based on the Max Brooks novel, is finally here. As someone who, unlike Burnsy, didn’t read the book or have much investment in this project one way or the other, it doesn’t look like the worst thing in the world. They clearly threw out the oral history conceit and just made it a traditional zombie apocalypse movie, so you can understand why someone hoping for “World War Z” would be pissed. But for the rest of us, it just looks like 28 Days Later with that guy from the Chanel commercial running around fighting people with a flowy scarf on. “Plans disappear, dreams take over… But wherever I go… F*CKING ZOMBIES, EVERYWHERE! RUNNNNNNN!”

Read the rest of this entry »

72 Comments TAGS: , , , ,

Here’s A Teaser Trailer For ‘World War Z’

Written by Ashley Burns / 11.07.12

Tomorrow night, Entertainment Tonight is going to rock our worlds with the exclusive first look at the trailer for World War Z, which is based on the name of the best-selling book by Max Brooks. Directed by Marc Forster and starring Brad Pitt, Matthew Fox and a bunch of people who will be eaten, the film revolves around this plot: “A U.N. employee is racing against time and fate, as he travels the world trying to stop the outbreak of a deadly Zombie pandemic.”

That, of course, was not the plot of the book, but we have been there and done that to death and brought it back to life so it could eat our brains before we did it to death again. Since its inception, this book-to-film process has been a complete mess, and it has reportedly cost Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and the other production companies north of $150 million to get to a point at which it is simply acceptable to finally release.

But hey, check out the sweet zombie wave coming down those stairs. That’s pretty cool, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

30 Comments TAGS: , , , ,

Brad Pitt & World War Z director no longer speaking to each other

Written by Ashley Burns / 07.16.12

"Quick, over here. Stay away that d*ckhead director."

Not since Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston signed on have we had good news about World War Z. It seems like any time the film is mentioned, what follows is a tale of demise so bleak that it should be the actual screenplay. For every negative story that surfaced – like the script being so terrible that Damon Lindelof said it would take months to fix – it seems like someone conveniently leaks something that says, “Hey, look how realistic our zombies are!” or “Don’t believe us? Come watch the set footage yourself.

But it’s all meaningless, because as Robopanda pointed out, even though the film’s star and producer, Brad Pitt, selected Marc Forster to direct, their relationship has gone way south. And everyone knows that in a zombie apocalypse, the only direction is north.

… Brad Pitt, who Vulture hears exclusively from multiple production sources has become so frustrated with the film’s director, Marc Forster, that he stopped speaking to him altogether as the production heads into at least three weeks of reshoots.

Things got so bad that when Forster had notes on a scene for Pitt, they had to be relayed through an intermediary — and vice versa. We’re told that this awkward function was and is being largely fulfilled by a rotating trio of studio production president Marc Evans, Paramount film group head Adam Goodman, and Dede Gardner, a former executive at the studio who now runs Pitt’s company. And all this as the production crests $170 million as it heads into its costly reshoots, with an ending that is still in flux. (Via Vulture)

I’ve already aired my grievances with this colossal failure of a film production. I don’t have much else to say other than I pray someone is filming the entire production process. That way, Pitt’s Plan B company could at least release a Tropic Thunder-like documentary that explains how one of the world’s most beloved actors could have control of a hugely popular, much sought-after property and just completely screw it all to hell.

I’d say the chances of this film even being decent-at-best would be as good as T. Sean Collins risking his life to save Paris Hilton once the Long Island fortress is overrun. *frowns, self low five*

24 Comments TAGS: , , , , ,

Sign Up

Follow Us