World War Z News

Titan is Publishing a World War Z Illustrated Companion Book

On June 18th, Titan Publishing is going to release World War Z: The Art of the Film, a 160-page tome featuring the screenplay and more.

An official illustrated companion to the movie, opening June 21st, the book features a wealth of stunning production art, design sketches and storyboards.

Based on Max Brooks' best-selling novel "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War," the story revolves around United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Pitt), who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.

For a complete photo and video gallery from the film, follow this link!

Brad Pitt: World War Z is the Most Original Summer Movie
One of the most interesting movies opening this Summer is World War Z, which is based on the book by the same name, and was written by Max Brooks (son of legendary comedian Mel Brooks).

Brad Pitt stars as a United Nations worker trying to stop a zombie epidemic from affecting the world. Brad Pitt says World War Z is a very authentic, original summer movie, and that it is a fun, scary film. (Click on the media bar below to hear Brad Pitt
http://soundcloud.com/hollywood-outbreak/brad-pitt-most-intense-movie

EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL to Host Advanced Screening of WORLD WAR Z

Read more about EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL to Host Advanced Screening of WORLD WAR Z by null

Thanks to Paramount Pictures, we have 10 in-season passes up for grabs to see the zombietastic new Brad Pitt flick “World War Z”.

United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Pitt), traverses the world in a race against time to stop a pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.

“World War Z” stars Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, and Matthew Fox.


Read more at http://moviehole.net/201365268world-war-z#GAWyqSWxiFpkd7kC.99

World War Z not just a zombie flick - Pitt
Brad Pitt wants to assure anyone who thinks World War Z is just another zombie film: they couldn't be further from the truth.

Pitt pointed out during his first trip to Australia the film is different from zombie movies like George Romero's Dawn of the Dead or comedy Zombieland.

"If you think this is your typical zombie movie you're in for a shock because it has nothing to do with that genre," he said in Sydney.

"It's a big global pandemic."

Pitt says the movie "does not let up" after a virus rapidly begins to spread across the globe, turning humans into the undead.

Based on the post-apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks, the movie has deviated from the book to follow one character - ex-United Nations investigator Gerry Lane.

Played by Pitt, Lane must journey around the world, from South Korea to Israel and beyond, to find a cure for the virus and be reunited with his family.

Director Marc Forster says there are always two stories on the go.



"On one hand is this very intimate family story with a lot of heart, versus this huge epidemic outbreak," he says.

Aside from the story, there was one significant difference between World War Z and other zombie films.

Money. World War Z had a lot of it. And has a lot of it on the line.

Back in 2002, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later was financed for US$8 million. In comparison World War Z, which is being produced by Pitt's company Plan B, is around 25 times that.

The production woes of World War Z have been closely followed, with Vanity Fair writing that 40 minutes of the film had to be completely re-written and re-shot to fix the ending.

Reports say the budget ballooned to around US$200 million, while others have speculated that with marketing costs, it may have climbed to as much as US$400 million.

Forster, who has made small films like Stranger Than Fiction and big-budget ones like Quantum of Solace, said the difficulty with a blockbuster like World War Z was the sheer volume of extras on set.

"When you're working with a thousand extras and you have Brad Pitt in the middle of it, you can't individually direct all of those people, so it's just more like mass mayhem," he says.

"You give them a general direction and hope it goes right. If it doesn't you have to do it again. It's always much more tricky to pull this off."

World War Z marks the first big-budget film Pitt has produced and Forster says he was able to switch between actor and producer with ease.

"The great thing about having him as a producer, he wants every dollar being spent to go onscreen and make sure that's the best movie possible because he's also in it," he says.

"He was a great ally to have."

World War Z releases in New Zealand cinemas on June 19.

- AAP

World War Z Reveals 30 New Stills

Read more at http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=105322#UPtVdXd5PhgcxJb3.99

S.D. chosen for early 'World War Z' screening



San Diego is one of five cities that will host an early 3D showing of the new Brad Pitt movie "World War Z." The screening will take place at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, at Edwards Mira Mesa Stadium 18.
Paramount Pictures and Regal Entertainment Group are offering a special "Mega Ticket" movie package for "World War Z." Priced at $50, it includes the movie, a small popcorn, one HD digital copy of the movie when it becomes available for download or streaming, one pair of "World War Z" RealD 3D glasses and one official limited-edition movie poster.
General movie tickets are also available at $17.25 for adults and $14.50 for children. Visit fandango.com to purchase tickets.
The other cities showing the movie early are Irvine, Houston, Atlanta and King of Prussia, Pa. (near Philadelphia).
The movie opens in wide release on Friday, June 21.

Double-edged horde
Craig Mathieson
Sure, there's plenty of frantic spectacle, but Brad Pitt and co also give their zombie apocalypse a more intimate power.


Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/movies/doubleedged-horde-20130614-2o7oq.html#ixzz2WJ6LCChq

Zombocalypse now
June 16, 2013, 3 a.m.
 
 
The defining image of World War Z, according to director Marc Forster, is not a zombie biting into someone's flesh, but the wildlife montage that plays behind the opening credits, which might best be summed up with the words of one of his characters: ''Mother nature is a serial killer. The best there is.''
Forster grew up in Switzerland, and as a child spent a lot of time looking at the anthills behind his house. ''I loved watching these insects crawl around,'' he says.
Later, he became ''obsessed with swarms of birds and fish, how these swarms communicate with each other''.
The fascination stayed with him when he became a filmmaker.
''I was always thinking I had to implement that image in a film one day, this swarm theory.
''And once I started working on World War Z, I felt there was no better way to implement that than in a swarm of zombies.''
One of the key set pieces in the big-budget apocalypse film, produced by and starring Brad Pitt as a United Nations worker trying to find patient zero in this unexplained plague, involves a swarm of zombies attempting to scale the impossibly high wall that's been erected around Jerusalem.
The symbolism of that wall is rich and conflicted: it protects Jews and Palestinians alike, in a brief and oddly blissful moment of coexistence now the threat has been transferred to an Other, more foreign and dangerous than either could ever be. But in Forster's mind the scene's significance is global, not local.
His zombies trample each other to (un)death in their frantic bid to climb ever higher. ''As the zombie tower is building it's almost like a feeding frenzy, them going after the last resources with no respect for each other,'' he says. ''They're basically this pack, crawling on top of each other.
''I thought it's a strong image because that's how humanity is.''
So the zombie apocalypse - the zombocalypse, as the kids would have it - in World War Z represents a planet on the brink of economic and environmental collapse?
''Absolutely, that reflects the time we live in … There are not enough resources for the people that exist.''
It's possible Forster is the first filmmaker to use the zombie horde in quite this way, but he has in no sense betrayed the genre by doing so. One of the key factors in the appeal of the zombie as a fictional device is that it is almost uniquely malleable as a symbol. It is what the linguists call ''overdetermined'', a sign whose meanings (the things it signifies) have overwhelmed the word itself (the signifier). It's a little like a zombie horde on the move, in fact.
''Zombies are a very elastic storytelling trope,'' the US novelist Jonathan Maberry, whose zombie trilogy (starting with Patient Zero) has been optioned for television, said in 2010. ''They're endlessly fascinating because they play on so many of our fears: the loss of identity in ourselves and our loved ones, paranoia, fear of disease, racism and so on.''
Above all, he added, they represent ''a constant and universal threat that is implacable and unbearable''.
The seeming endlessness of the onslaught is a crucial aspect of the zombocalypse scenario: the zombie horde represents a threat so enormous it seems impossible to defy. It is infinitely substitutable for the many things we suspect threaten us but we struggle to contemplate: to Forster's resource depletion and overpopulation we might add nuclear war, viral epidemics such as HIV and SARS, even mindless consumerism.
Each has generated its own iterations of the zombie story, or at least its own readings of the zombie genre. In the hands of left-leaning cultural critics, the film that started it all - George A. Romero's low-budget black-and-white Night of the Living Dead (1968) - was an allegory for the mindless waste of life that was the Vietnam War. His 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead, with the action moved from a remote farmhouse to a suburban shopping mall, was a devastating critique of the empty lives of American consumers lulled into ignoring the ills of the world by the allure of all that shiny plastic.
The English zom-com Shaun of the Dead (2004) played a variation on the same tune: the repetitive pattern of life in suburban London is barely distinguishable from zombiedom; and in the end it's almost interchangeable, as Shaun and his best mate - by now a zombie, albeit one in restraints - resume the session on the gaming console they'd started before the plague set in.
Writing in the literary magazine Granta in 2011, Naomi Alderman, one of the developers of the app Zombies, Run, noted: ''The zombie apocalypse is the death of civilization. It represents the moment when all that becomes important is: do you have food? Do you have guns? We want to practice this in fantasy, to imagine it all the way through, especially in times of economic crisis.''
The ''philosophical counsellor'' Mark Dillof sees the genre as tapping into an anxiety about ''losing one's autonomy'', a kind of creeping ''paranoia'' - but one founded in genuine concerns.
All human societies are founded on borders, he argues, the most fundamental of which is that between the living and the dead.
''If the fear of zombies is prevalent today, it is because this is an age in which borders are being transgressed, on many fronts.''
Among them: non-traditional marriages, socialism, communism. ''Such movements as diversity, multiculturalism, globalisation, are threatening to dissolve the identity of various nations,'' he adds.
In the zombocalypse scenario, there is in fact precious little of the nation state left to dissolve. Arguably, this points to an anxiety about the rule of law in general and the viability (and reliability) of our political systems.
Nowhere is this played out more explicitly than in the US cable series The Walking Dead. The first two seasons of the phenomenally successful show (its season three finale was watched by 12.4 million people in the US in March) effectively pitted good cop Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) against bad cop Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) in a world in which all systems had broken down. At every turn, they presented their small band of survivors with a choice - between the rule of law and the rule of the gun. In season three, the lines became more blurred as Rick sought to defend his tribe against a rival band of survivors led by an autocratic psychopath known as The Governor (David Morrissey) - and in the process became increasingly like him.
The show had struck such a nerve, season three show runner Glen Mazzara told me late last year, because ''people really do believe that some sort of apocalypse is coming and we are going to have to bond together to survive, and the infrastructure of society and government will collapse''.
''They imagine, 'What would my life be like if I had no food, no water and only a couple of guns and had to protect my family and my neighbours?'.''
If it taps into the fantasies of the US survivalist movement and its counterparts (of both reactionary and the greenie hue) elsewhere, the show also touches on a fundamental question about what kind of society would we choose if we were to start again. Would it be compassionate or would it be based purely on the survival of the fittest? For a US that often feels as if it has lost its way, it's a compelling premise. The zombocalypse scenario can satisfy far baser instincts too, as anyone who has ever played a first-person shooter game such as Resident Evil or Left for Dead (or the real-world version, IRL Shooter) will attest. In offering up an enemy that is both human and not, and presenting us with a simple kill or be killed scenario, it allows us to satisfy the killer instinct in a safe environment. Not for nothing was the virus in 28 Days Later called ''Rage'', even if the infected were never actually labelled zombies.
''Zombies are very simple, they don't have a complicated mythology like vampires or aliens,'' Mazzara says. ''They just keep coming at you - they're the never-ending presence of death.''
Writing in the Foreign Policy journal in 2010, Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics, noted that ''zombie stories end one of two ways - the elimination/subjugation of all zombies, or the eradication of humanity from the face of the Earth''.
That is, in many ways, the choice many of us feel we face in the real world: we keep stumbling through, failing to act upon the threats we face, like so many zombies, or we rise up and reclaim our humanity, and our future.
''We're living in times where there are these really big problems,'' says Max Brooks, son of Mel and author of the book on which World War Z is based. ''We've got terrorism, economic problems, unpopular wars, social meltdowns … We're living in, not apocalyptic times, but I think we're living in fear of the apocalyptic times.''
Stories like his provide people with ''a sort of safe vessel for the end of the world,'' he adds. ''Zombies are safe. Zombies are manageable. You can't shoot the Gulf oil spill in the head.''
 
More than one fallout
 
Brad Pitt has a lot riding on World War Z. The big-budget zombie film is produced by his company, Plan B, in partnership with Paramount, so it's not just his face up there on screen - it's his dollars, too.
It's no secret that things didn't always run smoothly. Paramount bought the rights to the book on which it is based - written by Max Brooks, son of Mel - in June 2006 as a vehicle for Plan B. Filming was set to start in early 2009 but the project went back to the drawing board when the screenplay was rejected. By mid-2011 it was back on; a year later - as it ran over time and over budget and a new ending was ordered - Pitt and his Swiss-German director Marc Forster were no longer talking.
So goes the folk tale, at least. But according to Forster, who directed the James Bond film Quantum of Solace in 2008, much of what has been reported is simply not true.
''I finished the movie in the amount of days I was given, so we didn't go over schedule or anything like that,'' he says.
What of the rumours that he and Brad were not speaking? ''I was surprised when I read that. We were always in communication and respectful to each other. We never even had an argument or fight. I would say we are 99 per cent on board with the cut and the similar opinion. It wasn't like we had a communication breakdown.''
The concept of migration, and the experience of being a refugee, plays a surprisingly large role in the film. That ''reflects the time we live in,'' Forster says. But should we detect the hand of activist Brad - and maybe even Angelina Jolie - in that?
''Not at all,'' Forster insists. ''In fact, there was a concern to make sure it didn't reflect that they are so active in [that area]. It was actually me pushing a little more for that.''
However troubled its birth may or may not have been, the ending of World War Z seems very much to be aiming for a sequel. ''It's definitely in the air if it works out,'' Forster says. ''The idea we discussed originally was maybe a trilogy. But let's see how the box office goes and then we'll go from there.''
And if it is favourable, would he go there again, despite everything? ''It's always tricky with me,'' the director says. ''They offered me Skyfall as well and I didn't want to do another Bond movie. I like to switch genres. But in this case I definitely would leave it open. I don't want to close that door.''

World War Z Muse Does Sergio Leone Remix for Knights of Cydonia


At the London Premiere of World War Z, Muse played a free gig just after the film’s premiere. The song, Knights of Cydonia featured an intro that was a remix of the Sergio Leone iconic spaghetti western, Once Upon a Time in the West. Starting with the harmonica solo from the Leone classic’s soundtrack of the film, titled simply Harmonica, goosebumps rise as the song is played in. You can see a video of their live performance at the London premiere below.
As Muse amp the song up, the crowd show their obvious appreciation of the music and its remixing of the Ennio Morricone intro. During the intro, the crowd was so silent you could hear a pin drop. The English rockband from Teignmouth, Devon in the UK was formed in 1994 and the group did the soundtrack for Brad Pitt’s blockbuster zombie apocalypse film.
The music for the apocalyptic film also features a sort of “back rhythm” akin to the Tubular Bells music used for 1975 horror film The Exorcist the combination of the two “homages” to previous popular films shows the bands connection with films and their apparent appreciation of great movie soundtracks. It isn’t prevalent, but if you listen closely, you can hear it.
The group’s singer Matthew Bellamy explained that using songs from their latest album The 2nd Law for the apocalyptic horror film’s soundtrack was a “great fit”. Talking to Absolute Radio in an earlier interview, Bellamy said, “We’ve done our music in films a few times but this is definitely my favourite one. It was a real collaboration from beginning to end so I’m really glad we got the song in.”
The 35 year-old singer went on, “This is probably the biggest film we’ve ever done. Right from the bat we knew this was a big thing because they kept contacting us when we were making the album saying they wanted us to score the film,” he added that, “We weren’t available to score the film, so we stayed in touch with them and they invited me and Dom to go and see early cuts of the film and we saw some really crazy stuff.
Bellamy also revealed that he had read the book while he was making the album. He said, “I was reading World War Z when I made the album – and I loved it – it had an influence [on] songs like ‘Survival’, like ‘Isolated System’. I was thinking about this kind of insane survival situation – this real bleak kind of apocalyptic scenario – when I was making the album, which I tend to do anyway when I’m making albums.
He concluded the interview by saying that he is a great fan of the film and that he loves what they film makers have done with it, He said, “So it’s a really great fit, it’s a lovely film. Well maybe lovely’s not the right word – it’s a real, like, thrill ride, total edge of your seat – got some real scary moments.”
Just listen to the World War Z as Muse does their Sergio Leone remix for their intro to the Knights of Cydonia and see if you don’t get the same little rush and goose bumps that we did, when hearing that harmonica solo that was originally written for the screen years ago for Once Upon a Time in the West.

World War Z" Prize Pack From CafePressClick here for more contests & giveaways



Prize: One winner will receive a t-shirt, water bottle, notebook and smartphone case
Number of winners allowed: 1
Ends: Tuesday July 2nd 2013

United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) traverses the globe in a race against time to stop a pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself in "World War Z."

CafePress has partnered with Paramount Pictures to launch the official "World War Z" online store. CafePress, the World's Customization Engine®, now carries one-of-a-kind World War Z T-shirts, cases, water bottles, magnets, journals and more!

Be sure to support Gerry Lane in his fight against the Z pandemic on June 21!

Review roundup: 'World War Z'

June 17, 2013 8:02pm

World War Z" is one of the big upcoming box office releases, in which Brad Pitt plays a United Nations representative enlisted to help stop a zombie pandemic threatening to destroy mankind.

The film was due to be released late last year but suffered setbacks amid reports that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and Pitt clashed with director Marc Forster.

Following is a roundup of reviews of "World War Z", an adaptation of Max Brooks' 2006 apocalyptic novel, that will be released by Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures on June 21:

Telegraph (2 stars out of 5)

"There's blood and guts but no heart when Brad Pitt takes on zombie hordes ... Perhaps this should come as no surprise: shortly after filming on World War Z was thought to be complete, seven weeks of extra shooting took place in Budapest, which was followed by the writing and filming of an entirely new third act later in the year. Whatever direction the film was originally headed in, someone important obviously thought better of it." - Robbie Collin

Guardian (3 stars out of 5)

"World War Z is not a brilliant addition to the zombie lore. But it's also not the shuffling mess it was rumored to be. It's an attempt at large-scale seriousness in a genre that's frequently preposterous. It stumbles along on that intention." - Henry Barnes

Empire (3 stars out of 5)

"Slick, tense and hangs together fine, far from the disaster many predicted during its tortured birthing. But it's also just a little bit bland and generic ... This nightmarish travelogue is coy about gore, but it's still an effective thrill-ride. If the sequel happens, let's hope it delivers some actual combat." - Nick de Semlyen

The Hollywood Reporter

"A bunch of impressive set pieces stitched together rather than a good story convincingly told, this gargantuan production should ride Brad Pitt's name, teeming action scenes and widespread interest in all things zombie to strong box office returns, particularly internationally. Whether it will be enough to compensate Paramount and the assorted producers for the $200 million-plus investment and all their production." - Todd McCarthy

Variety

"Rising from an early grave of negative pre-release publicity, director Marc Forster and producer-star Brad Pitt's much-maligned "World War Z" emerges as a surprisingly smart, gripping and imaginative addition to the zombie-movie canon ... this sleekly crafted, often nail-biting tale of global zombiepocalypse clicks on both visceral and emotional levels, resulting in an unusually serious-minded summer entertainment." - Scott Foundas — Reuters

Blood, Bones & BRAAAAAINS: A Quick History of Pre-’World War Z’ Zombies
No matter what you call them — the undead, living dead, reanimated, returners, infected, walkers, rotters, or just the z-word — zombies are upon us. (You thought you could outrun them!) Maybe it’s because it goes hand-in-decaying-hand with the current rage for apocalyptic stories, but the dead have risen with a vengeance: mash-ups of zombies with classic literature are a solid industry, while the undead stagger regularly across television and movie screens, video games, and even political ads.
On June 21, the much-discussed adaptation of Max Brooks’ acclaimed 2006 bestseller World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War opens in theaters. A companion to his monster (ha) 2003 hit The Zombie Survival Guide, the novel documents an international pandemic via a series of fictional first-person accounts gathered in the aftermath by Brooks’ character, a United Nations worker. The film, directed by Marc Forster (“Quantum of Solace”), streamlines the book’s complexity into a thriller about a United Nations field specialist, played by Brad Pitt, in the thick of the zombie apocalypse.
An instant classic, World War Z is an addictive page-turner that also throws down a devastating commentary on epidemics and geopolitical relations, while honoring the zombie genre. Brooks, an avowed zombie obsessive, cites George A. Romero, the patron saint of undead cinema, as an influence, and his meticulously researched work not only recognizes the international currency of zombie stories (almost every nation has one), but also reflects their evolution in pop culture.
The earliest zombie pictures, such as 1932’s “White Zombie” (considered the first zombie feature) and 1943’s “I Walked with a Zombie,” used the original Haitian notion of a “zombi”: a normal person hypnotized or bewitched into an unconscious but animated state and open to outside stimuli. These movies played into western anxiety about the foreign, exotic Other, centered on white colonialists “infected” by voodoo. Later productions, even B-movies like Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space” or Del Tenney’s “The Horror of Party Beach,” heightened this by literally bringing the threat home. Drawing on the atomic age, the space race, and Communism, they showed we could be invaded and controlled in familiar situations. But it was Romero’s landmark “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) that took these themes and transformed them into real horror. Filmed in a grim black-and-white that reflected its despair, “Living Dead” was no schlockfest but an angry critique of American society that has been read as commentary on the Vietnam War, the government, and race and gender relations. It also established the popular conception of the zombie as a flesh-eating, reanimated corpse. Romero followed this with five sequels: “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), “Day of the Dead” (1985), “Land of the Dead” (2005), “Diary of the Dead” (2007), and “Survival of the Dead” (2010).
Though Brooks has said that he’s not a fan of the Return of the Living Dead series (unrelated to the Romero films) or its campy contemporaries, these movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s laid the foundations for the modern zombie. While many of them felt more like B-movie throwbacks than social commentary (not always a bad thing), they broadened the scope of zombie lore. “The Return of the Living Dead” (1985) introduced the now-popular idea that zombies eat brains. Like his “King Kong” remake, Peter Jackson’s gory 1992 comedy “Braindead” (released as “Dead Alive” in the U.S.) illustrated the danger of international travel with the transport of an infected species to suburban New Zealand. Meanwhile, “Day of the Dead” and the 1994 adaptation “Dellamorte Dellamore” (called “Cemetery Man” in the U.S.) explored the potential humanity of the undead.
In 2002, the genre was revived by the critical and commercial success of Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later,” which established the major themes of the millennial zombie narrative. Like Romero’s work, it evoked horror through stark realism: glimpses of an entire nation undone by a virus, the terrifying physicality of the (here, fast-moving) undead, or the realization that almost nothing separates humanity and savagery. The popularity of Boyle’s film led to hundreds of productions of varying quality, but the best mix entertainment and social commentary. The “rom-zom-com” “Shaun of the Dead,” the blockbuster adaptation “I Am Legend,” the comedy “Zombieland,” and the television hit “The Walking Dead” examine issues of national and global identity, human versus animal instinct, the individual and the community, and the efficacy and dangers of science. Along with the genre, these questions continue to evolve; this year, the adaptation “Warm Bodies” and the new BBC miniseries “In the Flesh” had sentient zombies as lead characters, using this development as metaphors for nationality, class, race, and sexuality. Whether it’s incisive social critique or just good old-fashioned brain eating, we look forward to seeing where the “World War Z” film will rank in this zombie pantheon.

World War Z: Brad Pitt vs. the Zombies


Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/18/world-war-z-brad-pitt-vs-the-zombies/#ixzz2WbwwbT00

Box Office: Brad Pitt's 'World War Z' Earns Solid $3.6M on Thursday



LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - So much for bad buzz, because "World War Z" is not the box-office disaster that some observers had gleefully speculated it would be.

The zombie thriller grossed a solid $3.6 million in late night showings Thursday night, according to studio estimates. The Brad Pitt-led cast of thousands racked up those numbers in 2,600 screens. It expands to more than 3,600 screens on Friday and is projected to generate roughly $50 million over the weekend.



The midnight numbers fall short of those generated by blockbusters like "Man of Steel" and "Iron Man 3," but they compare favorably with "The Great Gatsby," which earned $3.25 million in its late night showings on its way to a $50 million opening.

Despite the hot start, "World War Z" is not expected to be the weekend's top film. That honor will likely go to "Monsters University." The 3D prequel to 2001's "Monsters Inc." is projected to matriculate with around $70 million. If tracking holds, that will give Pixar its 14th consecutive first place opening.

Still it's a remarkable turn around for the $190 million-budgeted "World War Z," which had been plagued with reports of cost-overruns and expensive re-shoots, including an 11th hour decision to cook up a new ending.

The global backdrop of the zombie pandemic film appeared to be paying off as well. "World War Z" grossed a total of $5.7 million internationally on Thursday from territories like Korea, Argentina and Australia.

"World War Z" finds Pitt as a United Nations bureaucrat racing around the world in the hopes of stopping a virus that's turning the population into flesh-eating members of the undead. Reviews have been decent with the film earning a respectable 68 percent "fresh" rating on the critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

World War Z’ takes zombie movies to near-blockbuster level

Read more: ‘World War Z’ takes zombie movies to near-blockbuster level - Mywesttexas.com: Top Stories http://www.mywesttexas.com/top_stories/article_2fa3fc8c-dac6-11e2-9ada-001a4bcf887a.html#ixzz2WtiBGjzZ
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World War Z Review: Brad Pitt's Zombie Movie Is Full of "Heart-Pounding Thrills"


Read more: http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/world-war-z-review-brad-pitts-zombie-movie-is-full-of-heart-pounding-thrills-2013216#ixzz2Wtih2YWT
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New WORLD WAR Z Clip: Brad Pitt Is A Chatty Cathy On Plane Ride To South Korea

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Brad Pitt Scores Biggest Opening Weekend Ever with “World War Z”



UPDATE SATURDAY 1:11AM-- “World War Z,” according to estimates, made $23.5 million on Friday, and is headed to a $57 million weekend. This is a major win for Pitt, director Marc Forster and Paramount after reshooting a quarter of the film, and getting a lot of grief in the process. But the movie is a hit, critically and financially. Rest assured there will be a sequel. Brad has worked tirelessly for the last two weeks promoting “WWZ” everywhere except Mars. And it’s paid off.
Friday night 9;50PM Eastern: Brad Pitt is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but he’s never been associated with boffo box office. That may change this weekend. Pitt is eying his biggest opening weekend since “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in 2005 with “World War Z.” If the new movie goes over $50.4 million by Sunday night, it will be his biggest opening weekend ever. Right now, fueled by good reviews and strong word of mouth, “WWZ” looks very promising. Keep refreshing for updates…
Interesting: Pitt has never made a movie that could be considered a franchise-launcher. Only the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies fit that bill, and he was part of a large ensemble. His choice of roles has been extremely electic. The result is two Oscar nominations, for “Twelve Monkeys” and more recently “Moneyball.” He takes character roles a lot, and specializes in off beat comedy– thinking “Burn After Reading” and “Inglorious Basterds.”
Even though Brad is considered a sex symbol, his best roles rarely involve romance. His “big” movies have been gambles like “Jesse James” or “Benjamin Button.” There are no light romantic comedies with Brad Pitt playing the befuddled boyfriend. “Devil’s Own” and “Sleepers” were deep. “Snatch” and “Fight Club” were heavy. “Tree of Life” was experimental. The one time he really went light, with Julia Roberts in “The Mexican,” it didn’t work out.
So stay tuned. “WWZ” looks like it will be cause for celebration.

Box Office: Brad Pitt's 'World War Z' on Stunning $65M Pace But 'Monsters U' Even Bigger

Brad Pitt’s zombie thriller “World War Z” blew past expectations with nearly $25 million on its first day at the box office Friday, and is heading for a $65 million opening weekend. But that won’t be enough for the top spot.
Disney’s “Monsters University” is doing better than expected as well. The 3D animated family movie is on pace for an opening weekend north of $75 million, after debuting with an estimated $30 million Friday. That would make it the 14th consecutive Pixar film to open at No. 1, and the storied animation unit’s second-largest debut ever, behind only 2010’s “Toy Story 3” with $110 million.
Last week’s No. 1 movie, “Man of Steel,” brought in $12.4 million from a market-high 4,207 theaters Friday, and is looking at a three-day total in the $40 million range. That's a steep 71 percent drop from last week for the Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ Superman sequel, which has taken in $181 million domestically in just over a week.
Also read: Brad Pitt's 'World War Z': What Critics Think of the Zombie Thriller
The overall box office is pacing nearly 45 percent of the comparable weekend last year, when “Brave” debuted to $66 million and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer” was No. 2.
“Monsters University” received an “A” CinemaScore from first-night audiences at its 4,004 theaters (2,907 of which were 3D), so word-of-mouth should be strong Saturday and Sunday, when families are expected to turn out in force.
Billy Crystal and John Goodman return as Mike and Sully in this prequel to Disney’s 2001 “Monsters Inc.,” which opened to $$62 million and went on to bring in $290 million domestically. Dan Scanlon is the director and wrote the screenplay with Daniel Gerson and Robert L. Baird.
“World War Z,” the adaptation of Max Brooks' bestselling novel which stars Pitt as a United Nations worker battling a global zombie pandemic, received a “B+” CinemaScore from audiences in 3,607 theaters. Marc Forster directed.
Also read: 'World War Z' VFX Firm Prime Focus Secures $53M Investment
If it can maintain its current pace, it will be a remarkable turnaround for the $190 million-budgeted action thriller, which was plagued with cost-overruns and expensive re-shoots, including an 11th-hour decision to cook up a new ending. Just two months ago, it was tracking to open at $35 million, but the studio mounted a massive marketing campaign behind it, and days before its debut, analysts had revised their projections up to $50 million.
Pitt's Plan B produced the film, which was co-financed by Skydance Productions, in association with Hemisphere Media Capital and GK Films.
Sony’s R-rated Seth Rogen comedy “This is the End” was running fourth, after a $4.1 million Friday (a 41 percent drop from last week) put it on track for a $13 million second week. Its domestic total is up to $48.9 million.
Summit Entertainment’s magic-themed heist thriller “Now You See Me” was next, taking in $2.4 million Friday, just a 27 percent drop from last week. That puts it on track for a $7.6 million fourth weekend, which would up its domestic total to $94 million.
In its fifth week, Universal’s “Fast & Furious 6” raised its overall domestic total to $223 million with a $1.4 million Friday that put it on course for a $4.6 million weekend.
Universal’s horror thriller “The Purge,” Fox’s comedy “The Internship” and Paramount’s “Star Trek Into Darkness” were bunched behind those films and looking at three-day totals in the $3 million range.
Disney’s blockbuster “Iron Man 3,” in its sixth week of release, was battling with A24’s “The Bling Ring” for the tenth spot. Both are expected to finish the weekend at around $2 million.

MOVIE NEWS
World War Z Sequel Plans Begin... Again
From the very beginning everyone behind World War Z has been frank about hoping for a sequel-- though in the cautious, "we'll have to wait and see how it does" way that pretty much everyone is before their movie opens (Man of Steel being the rare recent exception). In early 2012 word broke that director Marc Forster was imagining the film as the beginning of a trilogy, but that was before the movie's ending was completely changed, leading to an avalanche of bad press and the sense that Paramount was just aiming to get the film out there, try not to totally lose their shirts on it, and forget all about it.

And then the power of Brad Pitt showed up to surprise us all. World War Z made an estimated $111.8 million worldwide this weekend, a remarkably strong debut for a non-sequel, decidedly non-family movie not based on a familiar property (Max Brooks's novel is great, but not exactly household name). Confident all over again, Paramount has told THR that they will now be actively developing a sequel, though the original plans for a trilogy seem to have at least been sharply altered back when the ending was changed. The current ending of the movie certainly leaves plenty of room for a potential sequel, and given how little World War Z used from Brooks's novel, they could mine entire scenes and story lines from there alone.

You might think that Pitt would be less than eager to return to a film that required him to do unbelievable amounts of publicity, but as a producer of the film he was a champion for it the entire time, and it's a huge hit for his Plan B Entertainment in addition to Paramount. It's also, unbelievably, the biggest opening of Pitt's career. Sure he's earned critical acclaim and significant box office success with recent prestige picks like Moneyball, Inglourious Basterds and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but the ability to make sure a blockbuster opens big is a major element of being an A-list star, and it's something Pitt has done far less often than Tom Cruise, Will Smith, or even Angelina Jolie. Pitt and Jolie's shared best-ever opening was Mr. And Mrs. Smith, until Jolie bested it with Wanted in 2008.

World War Z will doubtlessly be one of the summer's most unlikely success stories, and Paramount has to feel confident going into a sequel because, hey, now they know they've at least come up with one version of the story that can work. If you saw World War Z this weekend-- and based on the box office numbers, a lot of you did-- let us know if the movie had you interested in a sequel. If you've got ideas for that sequel too, by all means, share them in the comments.

Did Damon Lindelof save the World War Z movie?


Read more: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/world-war-z/26118/did-damon-lindelof-save-the-world-war-z-movie#ixzz2X6vpQOZQ

World War Z sequel in the works
Predicted by many to be dead on arrival, Brad Pitt's zombie-fighting efforts are now almost certain to rise again.
Paramount has reportedly started developing plans for a sequel to World War Z following a solid opening weekend in which the film has taken $112 million worldwide, $66 million of it in the US.
Full movie coverage
That wasn't enough to earn top spot in America – that went to Monsters University, with an $82 million debut – but it was surprisingly the best opening ever of a film starring Brad Pitt. It was also the best opening for an original (non-franchise) live-action (not animated) major release since Avatar in 2009.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the result means Paramount ''actively will turn to developing a sequel''.
That's great news not just for Pitt – who, as a producer of the film through his Plan B company, has a lot riding on it – but also vindication for director Marc Forster, whose handling of the big-budget production was the subject of rumour and speculation that led some to predict the film might go down as the "biggest flop ever".
In Australia recently to promote the film, Forster – who also directed the James Bond film Quantum of Solace in 2008 – reflected on the bad press. ''Most of it was exaggerated and not true,'' he said.
A problem with prop weapons being confiscated in Budapest triggered much of the coverage, he insisted, but the massive budget overruns and delays reported in some quarters – originally slated as a $175 million film, a final figure of $400 million was touted by some, though Paramount officially refers to it as a $190 million film now – were, he said, purely fiction. ''I finished the movie in the amount of days I was given, so we didn't go over schedule or anything like that.''
One thing that Forster didn't deny was that the decision to rewrite the final third of the film and reshoot the ending sent a message of chaos.
''Once we decided to change the ending people started to say, 'Oh the movie must be in trouble'. It wasn't that, it was just that we had this final big battle in Russia and I felt that a lot of these action movies have this big bang at the end and I just felt trying to make it bigger than [the set piece in] Israel would just make it empty.
''I said we need to try to simplify it. A lot of my other movies do it at the end, very simple and reflective. Brad and the zombie one on one. Simplicity. That would make it more like this haunted house idea.''
Forster admitted the film was conceived as part of a potential franchise. "It's definitely in the air if it works out," he said of the sequel that seems so clearly signalled by the film's conclusion. "The idea we discussed originally was maybe a trilogy. But let's see how the box office goes and then we'll go from there."
The signs certainly look positive now, so what chances he would be on board for any potential sequel?

"It's always tricky with me," the director said. "They offered me Skyfall as well and I didn't want to do another Bond movie. I like to switch genres. But in this case I definitely would leave it open. I don't want to close that door."
He also flagged that if a sequel did eventuate it was quite likely that the discarded Russian sequences might yet be brought back to life. "The visual effects need to be completed, but there's a lot there," he said. "It could definitely fit in there somewhere."
Meanwhile, in other box office news, Man of Steel continues to soar, with worldwide takings passing the $400 million mark after its second weekend in the US.
The Great Gatsby has now passed $300 million worldwide, making it far and away Baz Luhrmann's most successful film ever, well ahead of Australia's $211 million.

Zombies of ‘World War Z’ Are Realer Than They Look
By Ezra Klein Jun 26, 2013 5:00 PM CT

The zombies in the new film “World War Z” are too fast to be truly scary. That may be a sacrilegious point in some nerd circles, but it’s a key insight derived from epidemiology and, zombies aside, it has serious implications for global health.

The rise of fast zombies -- zombies that hunt like velociraptors rather than shamble like drunks -- is a great and recent innovation in zombiedom. It’s what made the film “28 Days Later” such a hit. It’s why the filmmakers opted for fast zombies in “World War Z.” (The book version uses slow zombies. Author Max Brooks told the New York Times he considers fast zombies too horrifying to think about.)

Although fast zombies appear much scarier on-screen, their speed is their weakness. Or, to be more exact, their speed is their virus’s weakness. Fast zombies don’t just run fast; they become zombies fast, too. In “World War Z,” the time from being bitten by a zombie to being reborn as a sprinting, snapping, shock troop of the undead yourself is less than 15 seconds. That’s bad news for anyone in the immediate vicinity. It’s good news, though, for anyone who isn’t.

“That offers the possibility for incredible spread within a defined community,” said Jonathan Zenilman, head of the infectious-diseases division at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “But you could surround a community and quarantine and keep it contained. You don’t have to worry about who’s on a plane to Europe.”

Fear of Disease
A scene from “World War Z” proves his point (mild spoilers ahead): A zombie ends up locked in the closet on an international flight. When a hapless flight attendant unlocks the closet, the zombie tears through the plane, creating more zombies, who in turn create more mayhem. The plane, predictably, crashes. That’s bad news for everyone on the plane. But it also arrests the spread of the disease by killing its hosts. The zombie virus can get on a plane to Europe, but because it spreads so fast and so lethally, it’s going to have trouble getting off.

Zombies, of course, are the public health community’s favorite monster. If werewolves represent our fear of the wild, aliens our fear of the unknown and vampires our fear of sex, zombies represent our fear of infectious disease. There’s a reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a whole page on “Zombie Preparedness” but nothing on Dracula.

After all, that’s what zombies, at least in most modern incarnations, are: diseased people. The zombie infection is often compared to rabies. It spreads through bites, presenting through aggression. But there’s a reason rabies hasn’t overwhelmed the Earth: It’s not a very efficient disease. Biting people is hard, and people tend to notice when you try it. That’s why Anne Schuchat doesn’t stay up nights fretting over zombies.

Schuchat, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, has worked on meningitis in West Africa, disease surveillance in South Africa and severe acute respiratory syndrome in China. She worries about the diseases that infect worlds -- those you can’t bring down with a shot to the head. Zombies are pleasant compared with her concerns.

The really scary diseases, she said, tend to have three qualities: first, a host population that isn’t immune; second, the capacity to spread rapidly; third, severity.

Diseases face a choice between spreading easily and being severe. If a disease is too hard on its host, killing quickly, it can’t spread. If it’s too easy on its host, it doesn’t much matter if it spreads. “That’s one of the reasons we talk about the 1918 influenza a lot,” Schuchat said. “In many ways, it was a perfect weapon. Most people actually survived that influenza. The death rate was only about 2 percent. But that’s enormous across a society.” Had its death rate been 100 percent, by contrast, the flu would’ve been stopped in its tracks.

New Dangers
If globalization is influenza’s ally, the ability to rapidly disseminate information is its mortal enemy. The quicker the world knows what disease is coming, the faster resources can be mobilized and behavior can be changed to stop it. This is where reality and “World War Z” -- the book this time, not the movie -- converge. SARS caught the world unprepared in 2002 because authorities in China, where it first appeared, covered it up. Brooks deploys a similar scenario at the start of his zombie near-apocalypse.

China has learned a lot since then. “I was in Beijing during the SARS response,” Schuchat said. “The Chinese have come an enormous distance since 2003. They’re real models now.” Their responsiveness and transparency were tested in February when a new strain of avian flu was found in China. Schuchat said that this time the Chinese did everything right: They alerted the World Health Organization, sequenced the genome and released the results, and mounted a massive effort to locate infections.

China’s strides are not necessarily the norm. The concern today is the Middle East, where the SARS-like coronavirus known as Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, has emerged, and transparency in dealing with it has been wanting.

Brooks believes that we like to consider these dangers in terms of zombies because we can calm our anxieties by telling ourselves that zombies aren’t real. “If all that happens because of a zombie plague, then you can say, ‘Oh, well, that would never happen, because there’s no zombies,’” he told the Times. But, to be a bit of a downer, the threat is real, and it’s even scarier than zombies.

(Ezra Klein is a Bloomberg View columnist.)

To contact the writer on this article: Ezra Klein in Washington at wonkbook@gmail.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Francis Wilkinson at fwilkinson1@bloomberg.net.

Brad, me and the Undead

Laura Kelly details her brush with Hollywood's hottest star and talks to World War Z author Max Brooks

There are few things more off-putting when you’re trying to escape hordes of ravenous brain-munching zombies than the realisation that Brad Pitt has just brushed up against you, but here I am. It’s August 2011 and the centre of Glasgow has been turned into the centre of Philadelphia– much to the iPhone-toting amusement of us locals – for the filming of World War Z.

World War Z began life as an apocalyptic horror novel by American author, screenwriter and zombie expert Max Brooks. Released back in 2002, it is framed as an oral history set after the world has gone completely tits up due to a zombie plague. It has sold more than one million copies around the world and in 2006 Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company bought the rights to shoot the film version. With Pitt in the lead role, World War Z the film became a $400m juggernaut that brought millions of pounds into Glasgow’s economy over the two-week shoot – and led to my close encounter with Pitt. Yet Brooks says it shares a name with his book, “and that’s it”.

“They snapped up the book pretty fast and I haven’t heard a thing since. You know more about the movie than I do!” he laughs.

A lowly extra, I can’t tell him much inside information, aside from that I’ve done some fine terrified expressions, but as the son of Hollywood legend Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft, Max is well placed to be sanguine. “My dad’s advice was, if you’re not invited to the party, don’t show up. The truth is, I have no right to complain. Regardless of how close this movie will come to my book, a lot more people are reading my book because of this movie.”

Like Brooks, I got into zombies through the daddy of them all, George Romero. “My favourite zombie movie is the original Dawn of the Dead,” he explains. “It dared to deal with the day after. Most horrors are very traditional – there’s a night and you’re cut off, you’re fighting for your life and running for your life, then the next morning the police arrive and some cop is scratching his head going, how are we going to write this up? In Dawn of the Dead, the sun comes up and the zombies don’t care, they just keep coming. It’s terrifying.”

Romero’s zombies are gory and scary but they’re also famously metaphorical – Dawn of the Dead critiques the materialism of the baby boomers, for example. Brooks’ book follows in the tradition by using zombies to look at how humanity copes in the face of a real disaster. “I lived through an apocalypse, which was Aids,” he says. “I never got over that. I was in New York at 9/11. The reason, in America, that zombie survivalism has really taken off is because there is nothing zombie-specific about zombie survival. If you are ready for a zombie plague, then you are also ready for an earthquake.”

Infinitely flexible, the brain-eaters gained a reputation as the thinking gore-hound’s monster. Shuffling among their ranks has become a badge of honour – Simon Pegg’s done it (in Romero’s Land of the Dead), Peter Jackson’s done it (in an ad for the American Red Cross) and of course, Bill Murray’s done it (in Zombieland).

With this in mind, the discovery that I was to be one of the screaming masses rather than the gory threat was the first in a line of disappointments. Apparently, what with this being a new-fangled, running zombie kind of film, they’d gone and employed dancers to better portray the animated corpses.

For true zombie fans, I scarcely need to explain that walking beats running, but for the uninitiated, Brooks explains: “It’s the difference between getting shot and getting cancer. You get shot, you’re dead before you know it – the same thing with a fast zombie. Being attacked by slow zombies, you have a lot of time to think about how you’re going to die.”

Like Brooks, I’ve had a Zombie Emergency Plan for years. Therefore, I decide to think of the whole thing as one big ‘preparedness exercise’.

Day one reveals that zombies are early risers: 5.30am sees extras snaking around a building earmarked for demolition, queuing to get in costume. This is followed by a long queue to acquire breakfast, and then a long wait before anything much happens.

Outside the zombie film seems to be warping into an action movie with lots of big car crashes but the extras’ holding area is exactly what the breakdown of human society will look like – hundreds of people with no idea what to do, quoting The Simpsons.

Brooks’ book is widely read, as I imagine it would be should the dead ever rise. He’s got lots of good advice, coming from his days in the US Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

Tip number one: make sure you have dry socks. “They’re not sexy or macho but my father was in the Battleof the Bulge and I grew up on stories about how he prevented his toes from freezing off. It’s those little tiny details that are the difference between life and death.”

Eventually, we begin the day’s screaming. On the first day, we’re so convincing we have to be warned not to elbow each other in the face, after an elderly lady is pushed over in the melee. By day three, we have to be reminded by the medium of loudhailer to stop laughing. Even in a real disaster you’d only scream for the first couple of days.

Around this time, the whisper goes round that “Brad’s here”. I’ve been loudly announcing to anyone who will listen that I went off Brad when he broke up with Jennifer Aniston, which is all very well in theory but becomes untenable at the moment I get close enough for my boob to get in the way of his acting. Pushed into him, it turns out he has proper star power. He may not actually glow but he certainly seems to. He’s taller than you’d think; his skin’s better and his eyes look right through you. It’s enough to freeze you in your tracks, even if you’re still trying really hard to pretend there are fast zombies behind you. There may well be a reason why they’ve let him have charge of the most expensive zombie film ever made.

Still, there’s the running zombies, the wild deviation from the book, the lack of blood in order to secure a PG-13 rating inAmerica. I am starting to worry I am in the worst zombie film ever.

In the following months it’s a concern that will echo around the world. Delays, a hasty rewrite by Lost co-author Damon Lindelof, reshoots, a budget out of control: it all seems to bode badly. Vanity Fair runs a cover story about Brad’s “epic battle” to get the film made, and The Guardian and The Daily Mail briefly agree for long enough to ask whether World War Z is going to be the “most expensive flop of all time”.

It may not be his baby any more but Brooks says we should wait to see the film before we rush to judgement. “I grew up in Hollywood, so I take those sorts of articles with a grain of salt,” he says. “I’m old enough to remember Richard Dreyfuss on Johnny Carson saying, ‘Listen, I was just in this movie, you don’t want to see it, it’s terrible, it’s going to be a disaster. It’s called Jaws’.”

Like Brooks, I’ll find out this week whether WWZ is more Jaws or John Carter. First-look reviews actually appear to be pretty positive – with an 80 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, it would appear that glowing Brad still has it.

“Even if this thing is an amazing mega hit, which it may well be – I mean, they keep having these test screenings and everyone who comes out keeps raving – I cannot share in the glory. I had nothing to do with it,” insists Brooks. “If people come up to me and say, ‘I loved the book’, I will definitely accept their congratulations. But if people come up to me and say, ‘I loved the movie’, I’ll say, good for you – go tell Marc Forster or Brad Pitt or Paramount… Or you! You were a great extra. You have done more to make this movie a success than me.”

Glad as I am to have been recognised by the world’s most famous zombie expert, and as worried as I am that my Hollywood debut is going to be a stinker, I’m not going to lie: as the opening credits come up in our local IMAX, I’ll be whispering the extras’ prayer – please, God, please just let me be in it.

@laurakaykelly