Highlights
- Brad Pitt's World War Z faced production troubles due to clashes between the director and screenwriter over the adaptation of the novel.
- Despite its box office success, a sequel to World War Z was never made due to issues during production and reshoots of the ending scene.
- The final scene of World War Z was rewritten and refilmed after Paramount deemed the original ending too bleak, leading to a more uplifting conclusion.
Brad Pitt's World War Z was a troubled production from the very start, with clashes between the director and screenwriters causing delays and rewrites.
The action-packed 2013 zombie apocalypse movie is one of the highest-grossing movies of the genre, although that doesn't come without a hefty budget. Despite the big box office performance from World War Z, a sequel for the film was never produced. That is probably due to all the issues that threatened the World War Z from pre-production right through to filming and post-production.
Loosely based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Max Brooks, Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a UN investigator who finds himself trying to protect his family while also trying to find a cure for the disease.
In the following, we take a look at what happened with production of World War Z and why the film was delayed and had to reshoot the entire ending.
World War Z Was Plagued With Budget And Production Issues
Director Vs Screenwriter
After Brad Pitt's Plan B production company won the rights to Brook's novel, Michael Straczynski (Thor and Underworld: Awakening) was snapped up to write the script for World War Z. When the script was leaked online in 2008, it was met with praise. The writing was different from the book, where the zombie apocalypse was depicted through fictional newspaper articles and interviews.
Marc Foster (Quantum of Solace) signed on as a director on Pitt's recommendation, which ultimately led to the production's issues. Forster and Straczynski clashed immediately, as both had different ideas on how Brooks' novel should be adapted.
Straczynski wanted the script to maintain the cerebral source material, while Forster wanted a more action-packed movie.
Even after a rewrite, the pair could not agree. Ultimately, the screenwriter and World War Z parted ways, and Matthew Michael Carnahan was brought in to overhaul the script.
Many cite the hiring of Marc Forster as one of the issues with the production of World War Z. His only previous venture into action blockbusters was the poorly received Quantum of Solace. For this reason, Simon Crane, the second-unit director who helped on Brad Pitt’s 2005 film Mr. & Mrs. Smith was brought in.
“The director was not empowered. There was nobody that steered the ship. … When you get [a director] who can’t do it all … you get a struggle as to whose is the singular voice.”
This wasn't the first time Marc Foster ran into issues while directing a movie. On the Bond sequel he made in 2008, on-set issues soon hit. "On 'Quantum' we were f*****," Daniel Craig told Time Out London. "We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers' strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn't employ a writer to finish it."
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Last Minute Production Changes
Three weeks before shooting of World War Z was expected to start in June 2011, Marc Forster was still making decisions about the look of the zombies and how they would move on-screen. An insider shared...
“They just couldn’t get it right. There was a lot of spinning of plates, a lot of talking. [But] they did not have a plan.”
There was also a range of behind-the-scenes staff changes during pre-production and filming. It has been reported that line producer Colin Wilson (Avatar) and Oscar-winning effects man John Nelson (Gladiator) were hired and replaced. Cinematographer Robert Richardson, who has won three Oscars over his career, is said to have asked to leave the production multiple times.
Budget Issues
World War Z filming began in mid-2011 with an expected budget of over $125 million, but this soon ballooned. During a big action sequence set in Jerusalem but filmed in Maltea, minor shooting delays and unexpected expenses soon ballooned the budget.
As the crew wrapped up the Malta shoot, a pile of forgotten purchase orders were discovered, adding millions of dollars to the original estimated cost, putting the film over budget just weeks into shooting.
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Brad Pitt Nearly Faced Criminal Charges For Filming World War Z's Original Final Scene
The final sequence of World War Z was set to be filmed in Budapest, although the action scene was set in Russia. This didn't go to plan and Brad Pitt and the production team nearly faced criminal charges.
On the morning of October 10, 2011, a Hungarian SWAT team raided the warehouse where the crew of World War Z had stored weapons to be used in filming, seizing 85 military-style assault rifles, handguns, and grenades.
According to reports at the time, the import papers claimed that the guns had been disabled when they were actually still fully functional. This was illegal in Hungary, causing Brad Pitt and the production company to be criminally investigated.
The arsenal was eventually returned to Pitt's production company and the charges were dropped on a technicality. With the movie already behind schedule and over budget, Pitt was said to be livid at this error. After all the legal issues, this ending wasn't even used in the final cut of World War Z.
How The Ending Of World War Z Changed
The ending of World War Z was changed after the people at Paramount weren't totally happy with the end result, believing it to be too bleak.
Paramount film group president Adam Goodman told 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.”
The World War Z ending sees Pitt's Gerry in a World Health Organization building with a small group of survivors. He needs to get to the center of the buildings and past all the infected zombies. Gerry infects himself with the pathogen, so he can walk past the living dead unharmed. The film ends with an uplifting montage of humanity fighting back and surviving. This is very different from the depressing original ending.
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In the originally ending, a time jump would show Gerry still fighting in Russia months ahead. They learn that zombies move slower in the cold, giving humans the upper hand. It's revealed he hasn't spoken to his family, and his wife has started a relationship with Matthew Fox's paratrooper.
Those who saw the early cut of World War Z, including Brad Pitt and Paramount, described the ending as "abrupt and incoherent." To fix the ending, Paramount hired Damon Lindelof to rewrite the script and spent millions of dollars refilling the last 40 minutes of the zombie blockbuster.
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