Nordling here.
The horror genre these days can't seem to catch a break, can it? Sure, if you want to make a smaller budget horror film, directors and writers are free to come up with anything they like, and just judging by the genre films at SXSW, there's some amazing, new voices in horror out there. But if you attempt to make something larger in scale, like Guillermo Del Toro did with his AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS adaptation, you run into studio pen-pushers and money guys who can't make the numbers add up to anything approaching profit, at least in their opinion.
And now Marc Forster seems to be having the same problem with his WORLD WAR Z adaptation, according to Vulture. Here we have a big scale zombie war film, produced by Brad Pitt who also stars in the film, and Paramount can't seem to find someone to share in the making of the $125 million dollar production, nor with an R rating that this production REQUIRES. Now, I understand about adapting Lovecraft because outside of geek circles he's not well known. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But everyone loves zombies right now, especially an adaptation of this particular book, which is huge in scale and promises action setpieces in spades. The Battle of Yonkers alone would require this to be an R rating and would be the SAVING PRIVATE RYAN beach sequence of zombie movies. But apparently Paramount signed Forster on with a PG-13 cut, which makes no sense to me. There's headshots galore in WORLD WAR Z. Hell, that's the only way the zombies can get taken down. How can you do a zombie film without headshots?
I'm trying to be optimistic here, but a toothless WORLD WAR Z isn't good for anyone - not the filmmakers and certainly not the audience. I urge Paramount and the producers to reconsider, but it's unlikely at this point that the film will even be made, not at the budget and scope that this film would require. Damn shame.
Nordling, out.
