Will World War Z 2, which has spent so long in production hell, ever truly happen? With Brad Pitt once again producing and starring, World War Z 2 has mimicked the original in that it might emerge from the depths of development hell. There is currently no release date for the follow-up to the popular zombie film that was made from the best-selling book by Max Brooks. There are many more tales to be told in the World War Z universe because the book functions as a close to journalistic anthology covering all aspects of a zombie outbreak.
The first movie did well at the box office, earning a whopping $540.5 million. The final act of World War Z required extensive reshoots, there were numerous rewrites, and the production went over budget by about $200 million. Even so, the movie’s production issues resulted in a remarkable comeback, so fans of the original film shouldn’t be discouraged by the fact that its sequel has been sitting on the back burner for such a long time. Momentum might soon take up again with Pitt as the driving force both in the pitch sessions and in front of the camera.
It would be wonderful to see World War Z 2 reappear on Paramount’s radar because there is something incredibly humorous about a zombie movie that refuses to die. The sequel has undoubtedly generated enough interest to justify development. It just depends on whether everything comes together for World War Z 2 to happen. Here are the most recent details regarding Brad Pitt’s part, the delay, and the scheduled release of World War Z 2.
World War Z 2’S Delays Explained – Is It Cancelled?
World War Z 2 was shelved by Paramount in February 2019. The creation of the film encountered various obstacles during the pre-production stage. Back in 2014, when Steven Knight, the writer of Locke and Peaky Blinders, submitted a screenplay, Paramount hired Dennis Kelly, the writer of the tragically unfinished British thriller Utopia, for a rewrite. It appears to be a mass rewriting of the making of the original film, which could cloud the vision. There has also been a fair amount of turnover among the directors under consideration. The Orphanage director Juan Antonio Bayona was enlisted in 2013. He then left because of other commitments. Instead, Bayona ended up joining the Jurassic World sequel.
As is typical when approving a big-budget film, there was a lot of back-and-forth among the Paramount hierarchy while the script was being revised. Pitt switched to his part in Ad Astra because he was a producer and a sought-after leading actor, which resulted in additional delays (although, as a producer on the project, it does fall within his remit to pick up or drop the project as he pleases). The sequel was further delayed after he delivered an outstanding performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Brad Pitt stayed with World War Z 2 throughout all of these other movies, indicating that he still intends to move the project along. Currently, assuming the sequel moves at all, it might not arrive until 2023 or 2024.
The fact that China has banned zombie and ghost movies is another issue. As a significant international market with notable influence in contemporary Hollywood, Paramount might be hesitant to make an uncertain investment. Given how much it cost to produce World War Z, Paramount might be worried about recovering such a large sum of money without having access to the Chinese market. Overall, things don’t seem very promising for World War Z 2’s return, although the development team has recovered from worse.
Brad Pitt Is Returning For World War Z 2
In the event that production on World War Z 2 resumes, Brad Pitt will return to the title role as Gerry Lane, a former UN investigator who travels the globe in search of solutions to the zombie apocalypse. In a safe haven free of zombies, Lane meets up with his family after the conclusion of the first film. By the time the credits roll, Gerry has also developed a method to immunise the populace against the virus that turns people into zombies. If Lane can survive a zombie-infested plane crash, as he does in the dramatic finale of the movie, he can also survive the pre-release mayhem that appears to have broken out in the World War Z 2 pre-production facility.
Mireille Enos, who portrayed Karin, Gerry’s wife in the original World War Z film, wants to come back. Her character is still alive and well at the conclusion of World War Z, so a return would enable the franchise to immediately tap into Pitt and Enos’ compelling chemistry. We were all waiting in line to go. “It just didn’t happen, even though we had Fincher and a gorgeous script,” she remarked. It seems such a shame that it won’t be produced. The first one was fantastic.
With the exception of Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve, Pitt steers clear of sequels despite his fame and typically opts for auteur-driven films directed by Tarantino, The Coen Brothers, and David Fincher. However, he has a special interest in this project because he produced the sequel to a box office hit, and he will exert all of his effort to see it through to completion. His friendship with Fincher has been particularly helpful for World War Z 2, as he agreed to serve as director years before the film was shelved. Notably, Pitt and World War Z director Marc Forster disagreed over the direction of the first movie (Forster wanted a big, brash zombie action movie, Pitt wanted to honour the vision and nuance of the source material). But there seems to be a deeper synchronisation between Pitt and Fincher that may respect the grim toughness of the World War Z book. Their combination might also provide the extra pressure required to shove the project back to the proper workstation. And given that he directed the rewrite, Fincher might be exactly what this sequel needs to give the plot direction and meaning.
World War Z 2’S Story: What Could Happen?
The first film’s conclusion leaves humanity with some optimism. The survivors can avoid zombie detection and flee to secure places thanks to a vaccination for the infection. There are two directions Pitt and Fincher may take with World War Z 2 because the plot looks to be pretty tied up at this point.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected people all over the world with various forms, some of which have withstood the effects of vaccines, may serve as real-world inspiration for the first choice. The virus that caused the outbreak in World War Z might behave like any other virus and change under pressure, forcing Gerry Lane to start over and find a complete cure or another vaccination. In George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, for instance, the Black protagonist survives a mall full of zombies only to be killed by cops at the end. The best zombie films offer societal commentary on the behaviours and attitudes of society at large. The chance, venue, and structure of World War Z 2 are ideal for delivering a biting view of social strife during a real-world outbreak. It may shed light on present events if the writers and Fincher chose to examine vaccination uptake, mistrust of authorities, variations, and successive waves of infection.
Some of the plot lines from the novel might be incorporated by the creators. It was a great shame that the zombie-hunting wiener dogs who gnaw on zombies’ feet to slow them down weren’t in the first World War Z movie. However, the book covers so much more ground than the original film. In it, the vaccine is a placebo that gives the populace a false sense of security. The world order completely disintegrates once this is proven to be incorrect, which triggers a full-scale effort to eradicate zombies. Human life expectancy and quality is severely reduced afterward, and the world is stuck in a nuclear winter with limited running water – but humans did survive the ordeal in some form.
A searing spectacle that really resonates would result from the collapse of human civilisation, which is presumably how you scale up from the first film. However, just with the release date, the specifics of the plot are yet unknown. According to a rumour, Gerry Lane would be tasked with finding the guy who invented the virus that caused the outbreak in Fincher’s World War Z 2 plot. However, since Fincher never explicitly stated this, we can only assume. After nearly ten years of anticipation, fans of the book and film will hopefully be able to watch World War Z 2 at some point.
