Brad Pitt and Max Brooks - Separated at birth?

Back in 2007, Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company outbid Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way for the rights to Victoria’s Secret orgies, er, I mean the film rights to World War Z, Max Brooks’ tale of the zombie apocalypse. WWZ seemed like a dream that would never come true for us nerds who love the book and ridiculously anticipate a film adaptation, but it’s on like Sardar Kahn, as production is currently under way. Directed by Marc Forster (nice bandeezy, bro), WWZ stars Pitt as a United Nations researcher traveling the world documenting stories of the battles against the zombie hoards. What kind of stories? Cool stories, bro.

The rest of the cast is still a question mark, as Ed Harris and Matthew Fox have been rumored but are now detached, and it doesn’t really matter because we have the first pictures from the set of World War Z and that’s all we need to get super excited and squeal like schoolgirls. Of course, if this movie sucks we’ll all cry for weeks, but we’ll climb that wall of zombie bodies when we come to it.

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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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After languishing in development hell for more than three years now, World War Z is looking like it might not happen at all. Vulture says Paramount is ready to pull the plug on the adaptation of Max Brooks’ (director Mel Brooks’ son) zombie-war oral history, even with Brad Pitt attached to star and director Marc Forster agreeing to make it PG-13.  Meanwhile, Kate Hudson’s Something Borrowed chugs along right on schedule, because God is dead.

The film currently has a price tag of more than $125 million, and the studio is fervently searching for a partner to share the risk.
Insiders say an eleventh-hour effort is being made to court frequent Paramount co-financier David Ellison (Mission: Impossible IV, Top Gun II) as well as another, unspecified investor. Paramount Film Group president Adam Goodman insists to Vulture, “We’re really committed to making a big, kick-ass giant movie with Marc Forster and Brad Pitt.” Pressed on whether the studio would move forward without a financial partner, Goodman declined to elaborate, saying it was too early to tell. Absent such a financial partner, it’s highly unlikely that Paramount would go forward; in today’s economic climate, few studios are shouldering such budgets alone.

$125 million is certainly a huge budget, but keep in mind, Universal’s Battleship was rumored to cost $200 million, and that’s a movie about battleships fighting aliens based on a boardgame and starring Rihanna (not to mention Robert Zemeckis’ latest mo-cap abortion, Mars Needs Moms, which cost Disney $175). Now, I like zombie movies about as much as I like little kids with lisps and white guys with dreads, but I know quite a few people who’ve read this book and they all have raging dork boners for it (name of my indie band, etc.).  Moreover, it’s a book. There’s already a story.  Remember when people used to make movies based on those? Stories? The people who option movie properties like to throw around the terms “name recognition” and “built-in audience”, but usually that name recognition manifests itself in reactions like, “FAMILY F*CKING CIRCUS, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!”

Here you have a name that’s legitimately recognized as a story (rather than, say, as a sock brand), a built-in audience that’s actually excited to see it adapted (hello, Twilight), multiple “proven” premises (zombies, post-apocalypse, explosions) — which studio execs love even though they’re meaningless, and arguably the biggest movie star in the world attached to star (Pitt’s last three movies: Inglourious Basterds: $313.6 mil worldwide; Benjamin Button: $334 mil worldwide; Burn After Reading: $164 million worldwide, for a quirky Coen Brothers movie Joe Methlab hated), and an Oscar-nominated director. If they can’t get this movie made, there’s no hope for anything that doesn’t involve Kevin James saving the rec center.

While the ladies of Comic Con may be swooning over Vince and his homemade Snorks costume, the first big movie news to develop is that Brad Pitt has officially signed on to star in the movie adaptation of World War Z. Author Max Brooks was signing copies of his books for fans when he received news from Paramount that Pitt was locked on starring in the film that his Plan B Entertainment purchased the rights to in 2007. Brooks also learned that Paramount has optioned two additional films, based on his book “The Zombie Survival Guide” and his graphic novel “The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.”

Feed us the BRAAAAAAAAAAINS of this huge deal, MTV’s Rick Marshall:

“I can’t believe how cool Paramount has been to me and these projects, and how cool Plan B has been,” said Brooks when asked for his reaction to the news.

According to Brooks, the studio is currently targeting a Summer 2012 release for the film, which chronicles a worldwide zombie outbreak through the first-hand accounts of survivors. The original screenplay was penned by “Babylon 5″ creator J. Michael Straczynski, but was later rewritten by Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Brooks said the studio recently received a new draft of the “World War Z” script, and “Quantum of Solace” director Marc Forster is still attached to direct the film.

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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.