It was set to be directed by the guy behind The Social Network and Gone Girl.
It is now coming up to six years since World War Z was released in cinemas and surprised everyone by actually being kind of great.
Word had spread that the entire ending of the movie had to be entirely reshot, causing the movie’s budget to skyrocket to (depending on how you ask) anywhere between $190 million and $269 million.
For a zombie movie, that is A LOT of money.
However, once released, the budget was all up there on the screen – well, except for the new ending, which seemed to take place almost entirely in one room – and it went on to make $540 million at the box office, making it the biggest hit of Brad Pitt’s career.
For anyone who has ever read the book it is based on, then they’ll know there is still a huge amount of zombie set-pieces to mine from that material (including an incredible one that takes place on a submarine), and ever since the first WWZ proved to be a massive hit, there has been talk of a sequel.
Director David Fincher, who worked with Pitt previously on Se7en and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, was signed on for World War Z 2, and Fincher was actually a replacement for the sequel’s original director J.A. Bayona, who left the project to direct Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom instead.
WWZ2 was set to go into production this summer in five different countries around the world, once Fincher had finished up work on Season Two of Mindhunter for Netflix, and Pitt was wrapped up on Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
However, The Playlist are reporting that Fincher’s version of the movie was working out to be even more expensive than the original. Plus, his sequel was lining up to be R-rated (unlike the original, which was a 12a), which would be narrowing the potential size of the audience.
And so, Paramount have pulled the plug, just a few days after they announced Mission: Impossibles 7 and 8 were heading into production, set for release in the summers of 2021 and 2022.
This isn’t the first time that Fincher has been dropped from a major blockbuster – he was, at one point or another, attached to Mission: Impossible, Blade, and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea – but it remains to be seen whether or not Pitt will remain on board the project now that his friend has left the director’s chair.
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