World War Z Director Marc Forster Discusses Running Zombies and How The Movie Will Keep the "Spirit" of the Book
Posted 09.15.11 by Ryan
Paramount's adaptation of World War Z has come under fire from fans recently when the movie's plot synopsis revealed that director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom) would abandon the flashback structure of Max Brooks' best-selling novel.
Told ten years after a zombie apocalypse, World War Z was comprised solely of interviews with survivors conducted by an unseen interviewer. The initial draft of the screenplay, written by comic book writer and Changeling scribe J. Michael Straczynski, reportedly found a way to weave in flashbacks, with Brooks publicly commenting that the script was "f**king brilliant". One of Forster's first actions as director of World War Z was to get Carnahan to rewrite the script, with the studio's press release handing Carnahan sole credit.
With much to answer for to the book's many fans, Forster explained to MTV that World War Z will stay true to "the spirit of the book."
In regard to World War Z, the idea is — obviously the book is not written as a narrative — so you try to take things from the book, but at same time you're changing certain things. But I do feel we're trying to keep it in the spirit of the book because it's important — you know, you have a lot of fans, and people who love the book. But, you know, in that sense I think we are doing our own film, telling our own story because we had to, but trying to still include as much as we can from the book.
Forster says that many of the "details" of the book are in place, but one thing that will be changed, as evidenced by some recent set videos of a zombie attack, will be the pace the zombies will move.
The one thing [that we changed] that a lot of people will have discussions over is the movement of the zombies and how the zombies move. Obviously, in Max Brook's book they move in the George Romero fashion. I feel like we have a little bit of a different approach, but it doesn't exclude that they might not eventually be fashioned how George Romero's zombies move, it's just like a little bit of a different approach. I think that will probably be one of the biggest discussions that there will be.
Targeted for a December 21, 2012, release date, World War Z stars Brad Pitt as a U.N. researcher who races around the globe to stop a zombie pandemic. Matthew Fox (Lost), Mireille Enos (The Killing), James Badge Dale (The Departed) and Elyes Gabel (HBO's Game of Thrones) all co-star.