Oh no! It looks like the zombies got Cupcake Dog!

World War Z is a novel by Mel Brooks’ son Max, a story of a zombie war told as an oral history.  Most people I know who’ve read it seemed to like it a lot.  Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster were on board for the movie adaptation, but last we heard, it was in danger of being scrapped because the budget ($125 mil) was considered too big, even after Forster agreed to make it PG-13. Paramount was looking for someone to co-finance.  Today it’s basically the same story, but more optimistic, I guess because it sounds like the co-financier, David Ellison, actually sounds interested. Interestingly enough, David is the brother of Megan Ellison (children of Oracle CEO Larry), who was in talks to finance Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze’s latest projects.  Because I guess independently-wealthy outsiders are the only people actually interesting in making real movies anymore.  Also, this is like the world’s most boring gossip column.  Doesn’t anyone not have famous parents anymore?  Phew.  TO THE BLOCKQUOTE!  From Deadline:

I’m hearing that hot and heavy talks are going on with David Ellison’s Skydance and as many as two other financiers to share the load…

Oh slow down, baby, you’re gettin me all hot…

…on a movie that is gearing up for production as soon as June. The plan remains for Brad Pitt to star and for Marc Forster to direct.  The temptation is to joke about the irony of a zombie project coming back to life after it was pronounced near dead.

Yes, my, that is a temptation.  Indeed my sides are quaking at the mere possibility of the irony that would befall the temptation to hypothetically make a joke so hilarious.  My God, Mike Fleming, did you type that with magic Mormon underwear over your computer to remain chaste?

As a devotee of great zombie movies from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, Zack Snyder’s spirited Dawn of the Dead remake and genre spoofs Zombieland and Shaun Of The Dead, I am excited enough by WWZ that I hope it stays on its fast track. Because if it waits around much longer, Hollywood might by that time have killed off the genre with an over-saturation of flesh-eating corpse movies that could be as fatal to the film zombie as a shotgun blast to the head.

Holy hell that is the worst sentence I’ve ever read.  I know you guys came here to learn about World War Z, but I am now fascinated by Mike Fleming and his unintentionally hilarious awful writing. His is the same site that employs Pete Hammond, by the way.

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Finding Neverland/Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster has been announced as the director of World War Z, Max Brook’s bestselling oral history of the zombie wars.  Ordinarily I’d tear this to shreds for being about zombies, but Matt over at WithLeather swears it’s the best thing he’s read since his herpes test came back negative.

Brooks — the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft — wrote a detailed tale in which a researcher for the U.N. Postwar Commission interviews survivors from countries all over the world, 10 years after the crisis, to gather a first-person post-mortem on a war that obliterated every country on the map.

“The genre always fascinated me, and when they pitched it to me, it reminded me of the paranoid conspiracy films of the ’70s like ‘All the President’s Men,’ ” Forster told Daily Variety.

This just goes to show what the children of famous people can accomplish when they decide not to be actors, singers, club promoters or DJs.

^{Because looking towards each other would’ve been gay}

David Arnold’s score for Quantum of Solace was recently made available for pre-order on Amazon, where it was briefly accompanied by the artwork you see above (the image was quickly pulled).  That’s Olga Kurylenko with Daniel Craig.  No one knows whether this is what the final poster will look like, but it would fit quite nicely into the “People Walking” theme of earlier posters.

Also, the latest news is that Quantum of Solace‘s running time has been confirmed at 106 minutes, making it the shortest Bond movie ever.  Which is good, because, you know, I got shit to do.

[Source]

After the jump I’ve got the first teaser trailer from the cursed set of Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie coming November 7th.

Seeking revenge for the death of his love, secret agent James Bond sets out to stop an environmentalist from taking control of a country’s water supply.

The Daniel Craig Bond is my favorite James Bond incarnation so far because he’s less a silky-smooth secret agent and more a psychopathic murderer with anger issues.  He seems to derive much of his power from his extreme fits of rage.  Don’t ask me why I find that more appealing.  I guess it’s just nice to live vicariously through someone who harnesses his anger to stab bad guys and bang hot chicks when you spend so much of your time punching things during hissy fits then jumping around the room cursing the bones in your hand for being so brittle.  Take that, wall!  That’ll teach you to just sit there while I burn my mouth on this Hot Pocket!

USA Today has a big article on the new Bond flick and a couple new pictures.  Some of the highlights:

"He has his heart broken," says Craig, who turned 40 during the shoot. "The love of his life is killed, and he finds out she’s not who she said she was. … He’s out for revenge. But he’s also out to find — and this is what the title is about — a ‘quantum of solace.’ Something has been taken away from him, and he’s out to get that back."

Wait, Bond? I was worried Quantum of Solace sounded like an emo band, but now this whole movie is starting to sound emo.  Bond isn’t supposed to have his heart broken by a woman – shitty vodka, a bad guy not dying fast enough – these are the things that make Bond sad, not a girl.  Girls are just what Bond does when he’s not killing people or driving a sweet car.

Director Marc Forster says setting the climax in the wasteland of Chile’s Atacama Desert fuses the plot with the internal life of Bond.  "I chose the desert because it’s isolated, you feel lonely, and that’s what Bond is struggling with himself,"

Bond is lonely?! Is he going to start painting his fingernails black and write poetry that overuses the word "duality"? 

"When they have this moment between them [Bond and the villain], Bond has a decision to make," Forster says. "Bond lost someone he loved. But what does it mean to kill someone, when you just lost someone?"

Uh, it makes you happy again, duh. Has this guy never seen an action movie before? The bad guy kills your woman and you chop his head off or throw him off a tall building and watch him impale on something. Then you say something like, "Stick around," and you have a party.  Everyone knows that.   

The Bond of the past was calculating and in control, rarely caught off guard and more bemused than tortured by the havoc he confronts. Quantum of Solace transforms him into damaged goods.

"Tortured by the havoc?" Was that an AFI reference of some sort.  You know, I’m starting to wonder if the Chilean mayor disrupting filming the other day was just an example of the Mexican Anti-Emo Riots moving south.  Oh yeah, did I mention there are anti-emo riots in Mexico?