For fans that may have been excited to see Brad Pitt fight zombies in an Indiana Jones-like scarf, I have some bad news. Pitt & director-buddy David Fincher’s ‘World War Z’ sequel has been shutdown during pre-production because the studio was unable to allocate a proper budget for it.
Per Variety:
Sources could not confirm what exactly the budget concerns were, other than the studio becoming more and more uncomfortable with where it was headed. The previous film had hit similar production budget issues with Damon Lindelof famously coming on at the last minute to rewrite the third act while the budget continued to inflate. That film was able to survive the production issues and go on to gross $540 million worldwide, but even though that worked out, the studio did not want to see a similar situation on the sequel.
While that doesn’t necessarily mean that the film is shutdown for good, it may have to move from Paramount Pictures where it’s currently in pre-production. The initial film did well in the box office, grossing $540 million worldwide and with the recent spike in apocalyptic/zombie movies, there is always interest in end-of-the-world type movies.
For now, we’ll have to play the wait-and-see game. Fincher and Pitt have worked on multiple successful films including ‘Fight Club’ & ‘Seven’.
