max brooks Tagged Articles at Cinematical
From Page to Screen: 'World War Z'
Filed under: Horror », From Page to Screen »
This column is so often steeped in skepticism that it's a relief to declare unequivocally: I cannot freakin' wait for this movie. Just as I was starting to think that the zombie sub-genre was becoming played – the recent trend toward athletic, lightning-quick zombies hasn't really cured the zombie movie's fundamental repetitiveness – World War Z threatens to revitalize (your gratitude for not writing "resurrect" or "reanimate") the genre by hauling it, straight-faced and dead serious, into the real world.
The first thing Brooks does is set ground rules. Once infected and undead, zombies are essentially monomaniacal brains unmoored from brains' normal contingencies – e.g. a pumping heart, a digestive system, oxygen. Until the brain itself is destroyed, it will stupidly, relentlessly pursue human flesh, using whatever parts of the original body remain at its disposal. Zombies move slowly, with arms – if available – raised toward their target. If a zombie finds prey, it will moan; if a nearby zombie hears a moan, it will move toward the source and let out a moan itself. You see how this could escalate.
Bond Director Turns to 'World War Z'
Filed under: Horror »
If you're a fan of horror and/or books, and you haven't checked out Max Brooks' World War Z yet, then here's another good excuse to go out and get a copy: The movie version seems to be moving full-steam ahead, and Variety informs us that Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster has been signed to head up WWZ. (The unpredictable director also helmed Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stay, Stranger Than Fiction, and The Kite Runner.)The ever-busy J. Michael Straczynski is on adaptation duty, and the project will arrive by way of Plan B and Paramount Pictures. Forster says "the genre always fascinated me, and when they pitched it to me, it reminded me of the paranoid conspiracy films of the '70s like 'All the President's Men." Sounds goo to me. Ah yes, the plot: It's a historical document about the zombie apocalypse, ten years after the fact. Pretty cool, eh?
That's all wehave on this project so far, but the article does inform us that A) Forster is unlikely to return to the Bond franchise and B) Max Brooks is also the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Which somehow makes his book even cooler. More on the World War Z movie as it comes in. Bet on it.
Bring Out Your Dead! World War Z is Coming!
Filed under: Fandom », Scripts », DIY/Filmmaking », Movie Marketing »
Get ready to break out your copies of The Zombie Survival Guide, and be sure to stock up on bottled water and "lobos" (you know, those weapons with which one decapitates the living dead in hand-to-hand combat) -- Max Brooks's World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is being made into a film, with J. Michael Straczynski (who's also scribing Silver Surfer) adapting the book for the big screen. The film is being produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment and Paramount is distributing.This is probably old news to some of you, but it's exciting news to me, since I just last night finished reading World War Z. I was absolutely immersed in this book and found it hard to put down. I've had deliciously scary zombie nightmares regularly while reading it, and have spent waayyyyyy more time than is probably healthy in discussions with my husband about the practical issues surrounding surviving a plague of the undead, comparing World War Z to Stephen King's plague book, The Stand, and pondering whether such a thing as an undead plague could actually scientifically happen (see, this kind of freakish obsessiveness is why I don't read or watch a lot of horror ...).
Brad Pitt's Plan B Is Producing World War Z
Filed under: Drama », Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Deals », Paramount », Scripts », Brad Pitt »
There has been no shortage of news coming out of the NYCC this past weekend (including from our very own Ryan Stewart). Now, IGN reports that Paramount and Brad Pitt's Plan B Productions are partnering to produce a film version of the novel World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War by Max Brooks (son of Mel). Brooks seems to have a flair for the subject of the "living challenged" as he also wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski is adapting the book but there is no confirmation yet that Pitt will star, Straczynski kept it pretty non-committal saying the script was, "For Brad Pitt potentially -- we'll see what happens. He might be the star in it."Adapting the book won't be easy, since the novel is an anthology of man's survival during the "great" war with the undead. The structure of the book has no main characters and jumps time and place with recollections of the survivors of the decade long fight. During a panel discussion, Straczynski described the story as "very political, very smart, very cagey". Straczynski seems confident that if all goes to plan with the script, production wouldn't be far behind. The project sounds promising, but considering Pitt's plate looks pretty full, I'm not counting on him getting in front of the cameras for this one.
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