Vanity Fair’s June issue reveals the many troubles of the film “World War Z.” They include:
- an unfinished script at the start of production
- a budget that went out of control (ending up somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million—and as the old joke goes, that’s a pretty expensive neighborhood!)
- an ending that didn’t make sense and required re-shooting 40 minutes worth of material
- throwing away twelve minutes of already-shot battle scenes
In the article, screenwriter Damon Lindelof says after it was obvious the director’s cut didn’t work he said, “Is there material that can be written to make that stuff work better? To have it make sense? To have it have emotional stakes? And plot logic and all that?”
OK, so it didn’t make sense, the plot wasn’t logical, the story didn’t have significant emotional stakes. Hmm, you’d think somebody might have noticed that earlier in the process.
Why would you start shooting a movie before you were happy with the script?
How was it that after the production finished shooting in Malta, somebody discovered a drawer full of unpaid invoices totalling millions?
Wasn’t anybody in charge?
Answers on a postcard, please.
The film stars Brad Pitt and is about a zombie pandemic. It could be interesting, but I suspect a film about how everything went wrong on the production could be even more interesting.
