The Playlist

Does 'World War Z' Need To Make $400 Million To Break Even? Vanity Fair Looks At The Runaway Brad Pitt Zombie Movie

By Edward Davis
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April 30, 2013 3:02 PM
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23 Comments

News

Paramount must be annoyed. Just a few weeks after the Entertainment Weekly piece on the much-maligned Brad Pitt-starring "World War Z" zombie movie played down the signal to noise on the “troubled production,” Vanity Fair has jumped into the fray dredging up more of the dirt on this runaway-freight-train of a blockbuster. To be fair, the "World War Z" story seems complicated, a series of many small and medium size issues snowballing into a near-disaster of a production, but in comparison, EW's feature is kind of a damage-control-y "nothing to see here, please disperse" response.

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Marc Forster Compares 'World War Z' Reshoots To Buying A Persian Rug

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 23, 2013 10:58 AM
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9 Comments

News

Listen, we get it. After the ton of not-so-hot press last year during the troubled production of "World War Z," the game plan now for director Marc Forster, star Brad Pitt and everyone else involved is to play it cool, brush it off, move on and try and make sure the summer tentpole makes some money. Cool. But maybe some better metaphors could be utilized in explaining just what happened during a shoot that required an entirely new ending and numerous writers to try and patch things up, and involved friction on set that apparently led to Pitt refusing to speak with Foster.

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How Brad Pitt Starved Himself, The Deleted Budapest Sequences & More Learned From 'World War Z'; Plus New Photos

By Edward Davis
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March 29, 2013 12:20 PM
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2 Comments

News

Entertainment Weekly's got the goods on "World War Z," the new geo-political zombie thriller starring Brad Pitt that is scheduled to arrive this summer via Paramount and Pitt's Plan B shingle. At $170 million, it's the most expensive zombie movie ever made (going $50 million above its original budget) and the lengthy and complicated production was rumored to be in dire trouble last year.

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"We've Lost The East Coast, China's Dark": New Super Bowl TV Spot For 'World War Z'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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January 31, 2013 7:37 PM
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3 Comments

News

Over the next few days, some of the bigger movies of the year are going to be unveiling their wares in front of one of the biggest TV audiences on the calendar. Yep, Superbowl Sunday has arrived, and as ever, some high profile movies are going to be using the commercial breaks to show new footage. And one of them just snuck out early, as Paramount have unveiled their big game spot for summer blockbuster "World War Z" a full 72 hours before game time.

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Watch: First Trailer For 'World War Z' Starring Brad Pitt Comes For Braiiiins

By Kevin Jagernauth
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November 8, 2012 6:56 PM
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26 Comments

News

Forget the troubled production, forget the rewrites and forget the reshoots. All that matters is what ends up on the big screen, and "World War Z" is ready to show off the goods. But can it escape its very-public problems as it heads toward the finish line?

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Marc Forster Will Be 'Imagining Nathan'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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September 28, 2012 6:14 PM
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6 Comments

News

Marc Forster hasn't been having a great 2012, though there is light for him at the end of the tunnel. While "World War Z" has become such a fiasco that the film's star, Brad Pitt, won't even talk to him, Forster is quietly lining up options that he can tackle once the zombie epic is finished. Way, way back at the beginning of the year, he was attached to the completely ridiculous sounding "Cowboy Viking Ninja," and now he's got another project, one that sounds kind of like "Sucker Punch" mixed with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?." Seriously.

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Now That Brad Pitt Isn't Speaking To Marc Forster, Will The Director Helm The 'World War Z' Reshoots?

By Kevin Jagernauth
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July 13, 2012 12:48 PM
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18 Comments

News

There are few actors in Hollywood who champion visionary filmmakers and artistic talent quite like Brad Pitt. He can be fiercely loyal and has developed long-term relationships as a producer and actor with folks like Terrence Malick, Andrew Dominik, Ridley Scott and David Fincher. But those friendships can fray. While we'll never know the whole story behind "Moneyball," we doubt Pitt and Steven Soderbergh are still exchanging birthday cards. And it looks like "World War Z" is brewing another rift between Pitt and a filmmaker.

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Apparently The First 45 Min. To 1 Hour Of 'World War Z' Is Fine…The Rest, Not So Much

By Joe Cunningham
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June 13, 2012 9:05 AM
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9 Comments

News

When it was revealed that Paramount's “World War Z” was going to be heading back for extensive reshoots, we can’t have been the only ones wondering how they were going to shoehorn Channing Tatum into this movie. Ah, maybe we’ve got our Paramount stories mixed up here, but the studio, which is celebrating its 100th year, isn’t having the best anniversary so far. “The Dictator” underperformed last month, and the move of “G.I Joe: Retaliation” left them without a summer tentpole – and this in the same year that they pushed back “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” 10 months to early 2013. Their hopes for the rest of the year will be pinned on “Paranormal Activity 4,” “Flight,” and the Tom Cruise vehicle “Jack Reacher” to make up some of the cash those aforementioned films won't be bringing in/must be los. And in the case of "World War Z," it could be quite a chunk of change.

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Discuss: As 'World War Z' Gets Seven Weeks Of Reshoots, Why Are So Many Tentpoles Being Delayed & Reworked?

By Oliver Lyttelton
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June 1, 2012 10:01 AM
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19 Comments

Features

Reshoots: they're the new principal photography, it would seem. Every so often, a story will crop up that some major movie has reassembled its cast and crew for what's usually referred to as "additional photography." And it's easy for that to be blown up into some kind of scaremongering story, when in actual fact, it's hard to find a film that doesn't go back for more after the main bulk of its shoot has wrapped. More often than not it's for "pick-ups" -- filling in some gaps, fixing some scenes that may have had some technical issues. Sometimes it's to add a new ending, or new scenes elsewhere in the picture, which may have occured to the filmmakers once in post-production. Virtually every major movie budgets and schedules for a week or two of additional photography, and almost every successful movie of the last few years -- "Avatar," "The Avengers," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2," "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" -- had some kind of reshoots.

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Marc Forster Goes From Zombies To 'Cowboy Ninja Viking' For Next Movie

By Kevin Jagernauth
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February 28, 2012 4:29 PM
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1 Comment

News

You would think Hollywood would've learned last summer after audiences rejected the mashup "Cowboys & Aliens" that mixing nuts and gum doesn't work. But try, try again right? So here was have "Cowboy Ninja Viking" (sigh) and with Marc Forster now attached to direct, it's closer to invading your screens.

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