New video of a scene from next year’s World War Z has appeared, and it looks like it’ll have even less to do with the original book than originally thought.
Production of World War Z‘s film adaptation is currently underway in Glasgow. So far, it’s been receiving a fair amount of hostility from fans of Max Brooks’ source novel, mainly because the proposed plot is, well, nothing like that of the book. Now, footage of the zombies in action has surfaced, and it’s certainly looking like the film’s vision is even more different than anticipated.
As you can see in the video, apparently shot by a bystander who was watching the production from afar, the zombies in the movie are going to be crazy fast. Not only that, but when they bite/eat someone, the change from living person to undead killer is nearly instantaneous.
This is incredibly different from how the zombies were portrayed in the book. As Brooks wrote them, the walking dead are straight out of classic George Romero films: They’re slow, stupid, and pose more of a threat to modern militaries because shock-and-awe tactics (and delivering mortal injuries) just don’t work against their shambling hordes.
Now, whether or not World War Z will be good or bad remains to be seen. It’s got a ton of very talented people involved the big screen adaptation, including director Marc Forster (who has an incredible list of movies to his name), Brad Pitt, and a screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski (who also wrote Thor and the excellent Babylon 5). That said, it seems like Hollywood is avoiding the deep, thought-provoking story about how humanity near death beneath the crushing weight of the zombie apocalypse and its subsequent triumph; instead, it looks like they’re going to deliver another big-budget action/horror movie … for better or for worse.
Source: io9
