Brad Pitt? Zombies? The director of Quantum of Solace? Hey, we're in.
It's called World War Z, and Fandango was part of a press group invited to check out 20 minutes of it last Friday and join in a Q&A sesh with director Marc Forster about his apocalyptic horror film –introduced by Mr. Pitt himself, who stars as a U.N. employee unwillingly tasked with tracking down Patient Zero in a zombie pandemic that's quickly taking over the planet. Said Pitt, "Four years ago, I knew nothing about zombies. I wasn't interested. Now I'm an expert...I wanted to make this film because I wanted to make a film my sons could actually see before they get old, and as you will see, we got a little carried away."
From the story to the look of the film, you'll think Contagion meets The Walking Dead, and that's not a bad thing. Of course, no plot spoilers revealed here, but we did see a couple of awesome "money shots."
The Coolest Scene
WWZ's zombies resemble less the tightly shot, slow moving yet vicious monsters of Walking Dead, and more the speedy Infected of 28 Days. They move in "swarms"—the footage we saw didn't show them much in close-up, but as a heaving, rushing mob running amok en masse with no regard to their surroundings. Meaning, they'll fly full speed off buildings with no awareness of height, or crush each other mercilessly to scale walls. We saw a great shot of hundreds of these guys using each other's bodies to climb a several hundred-foot wall surrounding Jerusalem—there are so many they look like ants working in tandem, reaching the top of the wall only to fall either to their destruction or to rush back to the swarm and try again.
You've seen part of this in the trailer by now, but the footage we saw presented this scene in context and the scope of it (and the way the zombie virus is spreading around the globe) is absolutely massive. They might be mostly CGI, but the zombie hordes are frightening in their relentless intensity and really not like anything we've seen on film before. Forster told us he'd watched pretty much every zombie movie ever made, and his intent was to avoid his zombies looking too campy -- so far so good. "Some zombie fans you will not be able to make happy and some zombie fans will embrace it and will love the movie," Forster said. "I think there always be discussion and a little bit of controversy on every zombie movie, because there are definitely different camps of what people prefer or not."
5 Facts: What You Need to Know
1. The filmmakers' goal was to make the zombie apocalypse look as real as possible (despite the necessary use of CG) and what (we're guessing, and Forster pretty much confirmed) will be a PG-13 rating. We didn't see the blood and gore of say Walking Dead, and didn't get a good look at any of them up close, but Forster assures us that some move slower than others and we will get a good look at them.
2. People "turn" at different rates. In the footage, Pitt and his family are fleeing Pittsburgh when he sees someone get bitten, and he notices it takes 12 seconds to transform from human to zombie. Forster told us that this varies by human, as any virus would affect humans—it's a hint that maybe not every human is susceptible, like the boy you've seen in the trailer who hunches down, untouched, in the midst of a rushing zombie horde. The entire film spans only a few days.
3. Even though they move fast, zombies don't have super powers. They actually don't run any faster than a normal person, it's the swarm that makes it seem that way.
4. Forster changed the ending from what they originally shot. "It’s a different ending than we initially had, but I prefer it and I think it’s more powerful and satisfying and it works."
5. The entire movie is a commentary on social issues like overpopulation. "It's a global film about global issues, with a zombie topic. Swarming is like a feeding frenzy."
Check out a couple of images with Forster and Pitt behind the scenes below. Then what say you? Excited to see Brad Pitt vs. a zombie horde? You have only to wait til World War Z opens June 21.
