World War Z

If you’re anything like me, you saw the very first trailer for World War Z hit the internet several months ago and you started vibrating. “What?!?!,” you thought. “How in the world did they turn that book into a movie??”   You probably had your doubts, but then you couldn’t help but get excited.

Time passed and the release date got closer and closer.  And then you started hearing rumors about problems in production.  Well, if you haven’t heard anything about such issues, let me take a few moments and catch you up.

The bottom line is that World War Z will be released June 21^st.  And most likely, it will be a decent summer hit.  There are, however, a fistful of problems.

First, the film is WAY over budget, reportedly by a whopping $75 million bones. That’s a LOT of money considering that the highest grossing zombie film of all time, bringing in $148 million, was Hotel Transylvania, which in my book doesn’t even count.  World War Z is rumored to have spent $200 million!  This could spell serious T.R.O.U.B.L.E!  And that starts with T and that rhymes with Z and that stands for zombie films, which don’t traditionally do well compared to other genres.

Second, the film has undergone numerous rewrites including scrapping the final 12 minutes and re-shooting another 20-30 minutes in order to rework what was apparently a terrible ending.  Gone is the “oral history” structure of the Max Brooks novel, replaced by a more conventional hero story where Brad Pitt’s character races to save the world from utter apocalypse.   I guess we’ll have to wait and see how audiences respond, especially the fans of the book whose word of mouth advertising could make it or break it. (And if you doubt the influence of the somewhat nerdy, but vocal minority, consider the Spiderman reboot. The nerd-fringe hated the original Tobey Maguire version, and guess what?  Enter Andrew Garfield.)

Third, it carries a PG-13 rating.  This might only be an issue for the true hard-core horror fans who might stay away from theaters assuming the lack of an R-rating will mean the power of the film will be neutered. I don’t necessarily think the rating will be an issue. The Walking Dead proves that you can do exceptional things without an R-rating. 

Some say this is a must-win for Brad Pitt. Some say he has lost a little bit of his cache. And this may be true. Another box office flop like Killing Me Softly would not bode well for Mr. Jolie. My gut tells me World War Z will do well. Personally, I am still excited about seeing it.  But I am a fan of the genre as well as the novel, so I may be a bit biased.  Only time will tell if WWZ survives or collapses under the pressure of its own weight.