The sequel to last year's surprising summer hit World War Z, starring Brad Pitt as...Brad Pitt as he takes on the mass of infected humans, has gotten a new writer. Variety reports that scribe Steven Knight will be taking over scripting duties for the Juan Antonio Bayona directed sequel. No release date has been set.
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Okay, that's the news, and I'll get back to that in a moment. Ahem. God damn, World War Z. If any movie doesn't need a sequel, it's this one. Not only did they actually fix everybody at the end - sorry, SPOILER ALERT - but it's such a poorly conceived piece of filmmaking, not simply because it takes a great text and disregards it entirely, but because it's also just kind of a bland, unexciting film. That it happened to be the highest grossing film of Brad Pitt's career. The highest grossing! The man's a cultural treasure!
Knight recently penned the script and directed Locke with Tom Hardy, and was previously nominated for an Oscar for 2002's dark and twisted Dirty Pretty Things, directed by Stephen Frears. The hiring of Knight signals that Paramount and Skydance, who produced the original, want to increase the quality of the film and hopefully avoid all of the backstage shenanigans that sent the original movie way overbudget. Knight's career has been filled with dark and moody thrillers, something a movie about zombies has every right to be.
JA Bayona's biggest hit in the states was 2007's surprisingly good The Orphanage, which if it lacked an original plot, more than made up for it with mood. The pairing of Knight and Bayona is absolutely a good sign for a sequel I know I am sure as hell dreading.
It is doubtful Knight will be able to convince the studio heads to just make Ken Burns' The Zombie War, but a man can dream, dammit. Pitt will also be producing the film, according to Variety.