By Travis Johnson
David Fincher, director of Seven, Fight Club, and The Social Network (and, to be fair, Alien 3) is reportedly in negotiations to slip into the director’s chair for World War Z 2. This would see him once again working with Brad Pitt, an actor he’s bossed around the set three times previously.
This is rather surprising news. While 2013’s Marc Forster-directed World War Z did respectable box office – $540m worldwide – it’s nobody’s favourite film, least of all fans of Max Brooks’ source novel, from which it deviated greatly (the book is essentially “Studs Turkel writes about the zombie apocalypse”, and is well worth your time). And though Fincher is not averse to occasionally dabbling in pop pulp – he directed the English language remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, after all – but WWZ seems a little too MOR for Fincher. It would also mark Fincher’s first sequel since Alien 3, and we all know how that turned out.
Still, it’s Pitt’s baby and, as Variety reported, he’s been working Fincher pretty hard on this one. An official announcement is probably just around the corner.
Any way, glass half full – perhaps Fincher will want to cleave closer to the original novel, which saw a reporter interviewing dozens of zombie war survivors to put together an oral history of the apocalypse. If you’ve never checked that out, don’t bother with the book, but jump straight to the audio adaptation, which features the voice talents of Nathan Fillion, Henry Rollins, Martin Scorsese, Mark Hamill, Carl Reiner, Jeri Ryan, Alan Alda, Frank Darabont, Jurgen Prochnow, John Tutrturro, Alfred Molina and more. It’s incredible.
