Corona | Coming Attractions

A second trailer for World War Z came out this week, offering more meat about the movie's storyline and set-up. There's also a greater emphasis on Brad Pitt's character's journey this time.

Reshoots are a typical part of the production process for most movies. Typically an extra week or two of filming is done so that new material can be used to enhance the stuff that's been filmed earlier. But when there's seven weeks of additional reshooting required, it's fair to suspect that extensive work needs to be still done on the picture.

That's what is happening right now with World War Z. Lost co-creator and Prometheus screenwriter Damon Lindelof is rewriting the screenplay for the movie and is said to be focusing on the third act. If that is indeed the case, and seven weeks of reshoots are needed, the entire third act may be in the process of being rebuilt from the ground up.

Paramount Pictures has decided to push back the release of World War Z from December 2012 to a much warmer June 21, 2013 date. While that does mean those waiting to see the zombie war will have to wait another six months, the move could be viewed as a sign of faith by the studio that they have a movie that will draw in summer box office crowds.

The studio has announced that the production is now moving to film scenes in the London borough of Southwark. Some scenes will be filmed at the Heygate Estate, a large compound that's scheduled for demolition. Since this is a movie about a zombie apocalypse, you can take a good guess as to why the movie will be shooting scenes at this place.

December 21, 2012 will be the day that World War Z gets released. Paramount Pictures has selected that date as the North American debut of their apocalyptic zombie thriller.

Also, even though the film is shooting right now, casting is still taking place. Reportedly Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is closing a deal to play a small but pivotal part in the movie.

Casting news continues to leak out which shows to us that Paramount is serious about getting World War Z filming this summer. The latest news is that Ed Harris and Matthew Fox are now in contract negotiations while French actress Julia Levy-Boeken has already landed a role.

Actor James Badge Dale is in negotiations to join the cast of World War Z. A cast member of HBO's The Pacific and AMC's Rubicon, Dale would play an American soldier who is caught up in the zombie crisis, trying to get word out about the extent of the crisis.

The Hollywood Reporter has two fascinating pieces of information to divulge to us today about the World War Z movie. First, that actress Mireille Enos (from AMC's The Killing TV series) is in talks to play the wife of Brad Pitt's character, the reporter who sets off to chronicle how the zombie epidemic began.

The second piece of news is that the plan now is to begin filming the movie starting in June. That's good news for everyone that's been eagerly awaiting this project receiving a greenlight.

Paramount may be close to letting World War Z go into turnaround if an investor isn't found to shoulder the $125 million dollar price tag for making the zombie picture. While Adam Goodwin, the studio's president, insists that the company wants to make a "big, kick-ass giant movie" from Max Brooks' tome, it needs someone to help shoulder the costs. That's why Paramount is now talking with David Ellison, the man who cut a check to make Mission: Impossible IV with Paramount, and another undisclosed investor, about making an undead movie.

At least Brad Pitt and Marc Forster remain onboard, for the time being.

According to Bloody Disgusting's sources at Comic-Con, Marc Forster has exited this project and Paramount is now actively courting a replacement for the director's chair.

It appears that the World War Z script is getting a rewrite. Fangoria Radio (reported via Bloody Disgusting) had author Max Brooks on and during the interview he revealed that screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan has come aboard to rewrite the WWZ screenplay. "He's one of Hollywood's hot A-list writers, so if they went after him and paid him a mountain of gold, it definitely shows their confidence in this project," Brooks is quoted as saying.

The brother of director Joe Carnahan, the writer wrote the screenplays for The Kingdom, Lions For Lambs and State of Play.

In an interview with Swiss online publication Migros-Magazin (and brought to our attention by Dark Horizons), director Marc Forster states that the World War Z production has hit a delay. The helmer states that the script still needs more development and that will likely mean that he will make another film called Disconnect before shooting the zombie apocalypse.

"Most zombie movies to this point have been small, focusing on a few people in a house. And this has got real scare. You're in India with hundreds of boats trying to get out of there with a tidal wave of zombies. The scale of what we're doing here is phenomenal."

That's what screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski explained to MTV Movies Blog about his part in the marking of the World War Z movie. Comparing his script's tone to that of The Bourne Identity, the Babylon 5 creator explained how he approached adapting Max Brooks' epic novel into a film story. "The fictional concept of the book is that its written by someone with the UN, so let's tell that story," he said. "Let's show the book being written. We follow this guy all over the world as he goes on these interviews, and he has his own personal story as well. You're cutting between the past and the present, how he got to this point."

Straczynski finished his first draft in the spring and now that Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster is on-board, he's working with the helmer on a final pass through. The ambitious hope is that the production can move ahead to schedule the first day of filming shortly after the start of 2009.

"Some of it is crazy in scale," Straczynski states. "It's huge. It's as political as the book was. And it ends with that book being completed."

Just as his new film is opening in North American theaters today, Variety reports that Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster has been hired to helm the World War Z movie for Paramount Pictures. "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," Forster told V.

All of the other incidentals for the project, like Straczynski's script and Plan B Entertainment as the film's producers, haven't changed. No ETA for a start to filming was given.