Looks like there's anxiety in gossip world over progress for the World War Z movie.

[Baitball Blogger]

I was so looking forward to this one, but it sounds like we're going to get something that isn't anything like the book.

World War Z: Nightmare movie

A nightmare movie is a movie on which everything goes wrong. And when I say everything, I mean everything. If it’s a miserable experience from start to finish, with hellish development and post-production periods to boot, then it’s a nightmare movie. Famous nightmare movies include Jaws and The Hurt Locker, so it’s not necessarily a death sentence, since sometimes you end up striking gold under all the sh*t. But usually, once you start talking about a movie in nightmare terms, you’re doomed.

So it breaks my heart that we have to talk about World War Z in nightmare terms, but yes, it is a nightmare movie. A source for The Hollywood Reporter stated it explicitly—it’s “a nightmare from top to bottom”. But you don’t need a source to tell you that. If you know what to look for, WWZ’s nightmare status has been written on the wall almost from the beginning. And I’m putting the bulk of the blame on Brad Pitt.

snip

I know you’re going, “Oh, Sarah and her zombies”, (Lainey: if you’re new to the site, Sarah’s a zombie expert, if such thing exists), but what struck me about WWZ when I read the book was that if you remove the zombies, what you’re left with is a chilling and realistic look at just how society could break down if we were confronted with a global interruption like a pandemic. I think that’s what Pitt & Co. aren’t getting about WWZ. It’s not really the zombies that are the scary part - they’re just a stand-in for whatever scenario you prefer for global meltdown (sickness, war, nuclear war, etc). WWZ is a psychological thriller as much as it is a horror story.

I’m also at a complete loss as to why they couldn’t decide what the zombies look like. It’s a BOOK. There’s a pre-existing description—a detailed and thorough one, actually—of what the zombies look like. Why is that even a conversation? Ditto for the ending. It already exists. I suspect that, given Paramount’s decision to cut WWZ down to PG-13 and market it as a potential franchise, they don’t like the morally ambiguous ending in the book. But that’s the problem, and here’s where I’m holding Pitt responsible—WWZ is not family friendly. It in no way is a PG-13 story. I can’t even imagine what they’ve sacrificed to grind it down to that point, but it’s got to be pretty much everything that made the book incredible. Pitt is capable of being a formidable producer, but none of that resolve has been on display for WWZ. It’s pretty much been compromise right from the start.

http://www.laineygossip.com/Articles/Details/23862/Brad-Pitt%E2%80%99s-World-War-Z-is-a-nightmare-movie

[4th law of robotics]

1. I was cautiously optimistic when I first heard they were making this movie

Now I'm going to lean more towards cautious.

/never should have been a movie anyway. Do it as a mini-series like band of brothers. Each hour long segment could be a different part of the story that can stand alone but also fit in to the overall narrative. It should not be an action/generic horror flick.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. I think that option is still open.

Let's hope we'll see it in our lifetimes.

[Iggo]

3. PG-13?

Lame.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. I know, right?

[Joe Shlabotnik]

5. PG-13? Well that just just killed my interest.

Sorry, not into family friendly bubble gum franchises. Thats what television is for. I'll be looking more forward to "Inbred" being released in October, and "Witches of Salem" towards the year end, but thats about it.