J. Michael Straczynski recently promised that his Forbidden Planet offering would be “something you’ve never seen before” and now he’s made a similar, highly positive statement for his other project, the zombie disaster movie, World War Z.
The film is being directed by Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) and produced by Brad Pitt‘s Plan B production company, with Straczynski penning the script, who is planning to keep the storytelling angle of the book by Max Brooks, which is told from the viewpoint of survivors of a massive worldwide zombie outbreak through eyewitness accounts told to a United Nations agent.
Most zombie movies to this point have been small, focusing on a few people in a house. And this has got real scare. You’re in India with hundreds of boats trying to get out of there with a tidal wave of zombies. The scale of what we’re doing here is phenomenal.
He also says that they hope to begin production by the first of the year after he collaborates with Forster and gets the perfect draft completed.
When asked how he would go about adapting a book that relies so heavily on first-person recollection, Straczynski explains:
The fictional concept of the book is that its written by someone with the UN, so let’s tell that story; let’s show the book being written. We follow this guy all over the world as he goes on these interviews, and he has his own personal story as well. You’re cutting between the past and the present, how he got to this point.
Something tells me if more writers and filmmakers had J. Michael Straczynski’s passion and “kid in a candy store” mentality toward their projects, this world would have a hell of a lot of better movies. Let us just hope that he’s able to reach that shiny, oh-so-difficult-to-reach bar that he’s seemingly set so high.
[Source: MTV]
