Exclusive: Marc Forster’s “World War Z,” which cost well over $200 million and stars Brad Pitt, doesn’t open until June 21st. But on Tuesday in New York and Los Angeles there will be a couple of early tastemaker screenings. They’re designed to “test the water” with friends and celebrity fans of Forster and Pitt. These are hot hot tickets. The whole “WWZ” debacle is chronicled very nicely in the current Vanity Fair.
Brad Pitt is due to arrive in Moscow in June to promote his new film World War Z at the Moscow International Film Festival, the festival’s general producer has said.
The 35th film festival will kick off with the premiere of the upcoming apocalyptic horror film, World War Z, to be attended by producer-star Pitt and film director Marc Forster.
World War Z, the big-budget adaptation of Max Brooks’ 2006 zombie-horror bestseller, is produced by Hollywood studio Paramount in partnership with Pitt’s Plan B production company.
“The Moscow Film Festival has proved itself as a good launching platform for movies,” Leonid Vereschagin told reporters at the Russian Pavillion in Cannes on Saturday.
The Moscow International Film Festival will be held on June 20-29.
That’s when Brad Pitt will walk the red carpet at the Australian premiere of his film World War Z.
Pitt is set to attend the event in Sydney with director Marc Forster and producer Dede Gardner.
A post-apocalyptic zombie movie, World War Z stars Pitt as United Nations employee Gerry Lane, who’s thrown into a race against time to stop a pandemic that’s toppling armies and governments and threatening the very future of humanity.
* World War Z releases in Australian cinemas on June 20
Actor-producer Brad Pitt made an unannounced appearance at the annual CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas to show off material from his upcoming apocalyptic epic, “World War Z.”
“Listen, five years ago, I knew absolutely nothing about a zombie; today, I consider myself an expert,” Pitt said, smiling for a packed house of surprised theater owners at Caesars Palace on Monday night. “This whole thing started because I just wanted to do a film that my boys could see before they turned 18 — one that they would like, anyways. And they love a zombie.” The 49-year-old Pitt and partner Angelina Jolie have six children, including three sons.
“So, we settled on this book, Max Brooks’ book, called ‘World War Z,’” Pitt continued. “We were faced with two Herculean challenges: How do we keep the global, spectacular, dynamic scope of the book and how do we originate a genre that’s been done quite often and really, really well? What you’re about to see is our answer to those two questions.”
A 3-D version of the film’s trailer was shown, along with 2-D versions of frantic and frightening stand-alone set pieces from the movie, which were perhaps best described as “The Running Dead.”
As I mentioned when we revealed the new film poster, I spent the day at Paramount recently, where producer/star Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster treated us to nearly 20 minutes of advance footage of their adaptation of Max Brooks’ post-apocalyptic oral history, World War Z. Before the screening, the preternaturally handsome Pitt addressed the assemblage of journalists about why he decided to produce and star in the zombie epic, saying, “In Max Brooks’ book we found much more than a zombie film. We found this global apocalypse. This zombie epidemic as worldwide pandemic.” With a bit of a laugh, Pitt noted, “I wanted to make a film my sons could actually see before they get old. As you will see, we got a little carried away.”
But when it comes to zombies, is getting carried away such a bad thing? With World War Z fans, it depends on who you ask. While much of the footage that we saw was action heavy, Forster assuaged fears by acknowledging that it wasn’t all run-and-gun zombie mayhem; the film will have quieter, more introspective moments like the novel. To be fair, the footage we saw, which sets up the story of Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, a former United Nations employee with experience in disaster-affected areas racing around the world in an attempt to find patient zero and prevent a zombie pandemic from destroying mankind as we know it, featured a nice balance of quieter character moments and heart-pumping action sequences. Noticeably absent, though, is the blood and gore that we’ve been trained to expect from zombie flicks. Part of making a film Pitt’s sons could see entails making a PG-13 film, a potentially polarizing move for genre diehards, but a choice that could make the film more accessible to a broader audience. The experience is somewhat akin to playing a videogame with the violence filter turned on, but the sense that something is missing quickly goes away.
Read more. Very interesting article with in addition an interview with Marc Forster, the director. Do read.
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“World War Z,” author Max Brooks’ best-selling novel about the aftermath of a worldwide zombie epidemic, has an almost supernatural ability to attract performers you wouldn’t normally associate with zombies. Brad Pitt is starring in the big-screen version, directed by Oscar nominee Marc Forster. And now an expanded version of the book on audio has added another high-brow performer: Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese.
Scorsese will perform the role of Breck Scott, a corrupt pharmaceutical developer who sells the American public on a placebo he claims will cure the zombie disease. It’s a slickster role the fast-talking Scorsese surely knocks out of the park.
It’s panic in the street in this exclusive new photo from next summer’s World War Z, the most expensive zombie project in Hollywood history and the most focused effort to date by Brad Pitt (center) to add something new to his varied career: the first multi-film popcorn franchise that he can claim as his and his alone.
Pitt plays Gerald Lane, a United Nations researcher watching civilization teeter on collapse in the face of a rapacious army of rasping death. How can the relentless hordes be stopped? To answer that question, Lane accepts a mission that pulls him away from his family (Mireille Enos of AMC’s now-terminated series The Killing plays his wife) and sends him on a global search for the plague’s dark origins — and, yes, that fact-finding odyssey just might take three PG-13 films to complete, if World War Z gets a lively response at the box office.
