WORLD WAR Z "Has No Plan"
Things are not going well for Brad Pitt and World War Z.
Already plagued with leadership problems because Pitt’s hand-picked director Marc Forster – who doesn’t have any experience with big FX-heavy tentpole pictures like this – has not had any real control on set because everyone else around him has more experience than he does, the movie has been pushed back to 2013 in order to get fixed.
Does that mean fixed like you do with your puppy so you don’t have more puppies? Maybe. This is the third movie Paramount has moved out of 2012 – the other two being G.I. Joe: Retaliation and 47 Ronin.
Damon Lindelof has been brought in for “extensive rewrites”, especially for the third act. Which means they didn’t quite know how to end it. Of course, hiring Lindelof doesn’t bode well for an ending with closure anyway…
And Paramount has reshoots, which could take anywhere from five to seven weeks. Reports from on-set have Forster dealing with conflicts among the principles on the crew. The result is a discombobulated mess where the director should probably be wearing the hat that says “I’m the leader. Which way did they go?”
Things went from bad to worse as director of photography Robert Richardson has reportedly asked several times to be released from the picture. The lack of a strong director makes it more difficult for the crew, as Richardson has reportedly been antagonistic toward them in his effort to impose some sense of order on the production.
On top of that, while in Hungary, an anti-terrorism unit of the Hungarian government swooped in and confiscated eighty-five prop assault rifles, thinking they were live weapons.
It’s an embarrassment for Pitt, certainly, as he was hoping this would be the first of a trilogy of movies based (loosely) on the book by Max Brooks. But it’s not without precedent that a movie this deep in the hole can be rescued. The Bourne Identity was plagued with problems, and it recovered enough to spawn two sequels and a reboot/sequel with Jeremy Renner.
Certainly the Paramount brass hopes that’s the case. “The footage from this film looks fantastic, but we all agreed it can have a better ending,” Paramount film group president Adam Goodman tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Getting the ending correct is essential, and we are in that creative process. World War Z is a giant summer movie and we are confident it will be a global hit when it’s released June 2013.”
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Sources:
[The Hollywood Reporter] [New York Daily News] [Digital Spy]
