David Fincher was all set to direct a sequel to World War Z back in the latter half of the last decade but Paramount scrapped the movie over budget concerns. Now, the director has said it looked a lot like HBO’s The Last of Us.
Speaking with GQ UK (via THR) during an interview for his upcoming The Killer the director dove into his plans for the sequel. “Well, it was a little like The Last of Us,” he said when asked about the sequel. “I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because The Last of Us has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff. In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite… they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”
Related: No, That Episode of The Last of Us Was Not ‘Filler’
Now, relating your own, unmade film to what might be some of the best television made this century is, of course, a great way to tell everyone that that movie you didn’t get to make was totally, really, truly going to be awesome if you’d just been allowed to make it. However, there’s probably some truth there given Fincher’s style and history of creating complex genre fare. It would have definitely been a diversion from the first film, which was a massive hit but not actually that great a movie.
Fincher also seems to insinuate that a sequel is still being worked on in one form or another. When asked if his film was going to be closer to the original novel the franchise is based on he replied that it wasn’t but then followed it up with, “But there is some talk of doing that.” Whether or not he’s involved with that talk isn’t clear but it seems like Paramount hasn’t entirely abandoned the project if discussions are still going on.
