Marc Forster to Direct World War Z

[Kane52630]

well when was the last good Forster movie?

QOS was awful

and machine gun preacher on a stellar 29% on RT

Machine Gun Preacher was actually pretty good. He's also done The Kite Runner, Finding Neverland, and of course Monster's Ball.

 

[Octoberist]

I think he's an example how an indie director who cat handle mainstream stuff. He's talented though.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

I really don't think Forster is the root cause of the problem here.

If an entire act of the script is being rewritten it's really not indicative of a problem with the film's direction, but more so the shooting script itself.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

http://www.tgdaily.com/entertainment/63931-world-war-z-production-suffers-third-act-failure

The Brad Pitt]-led Zombie apocalypse thriller already had to spend 7 weeks reshooting the ending because director Marc Forster wasn’t happy with the ending. Now it seems to be a lot worse.

Taking a few extra weeks to reshoot a few scenes is not terribly abnormal in Hollywood, with studios often factoring in some extra time to the release schedule for just such inevitabilities. As such, it wasn’t really news-worthy when Forster decided to reshoot a few scenes of Warld War Z, but now the director famed for Monster’s Ball in 2001 has hired Prometheus and LOST writer Damon Lindelof to completely rewrite the film’s conclusion.

Filming will start again late fall 2012, making it impossible to meet the original release date in mid-December. This is a huge blow to the project, but not as bad as it could have been. To be sure, the studio hasn't yet begun promoting the film, so it wouldn't have lost a lot of funds on useless advertisements. Unfortunately, this type of delay has been known to kill a film entirely in the past, so if you’ve been looking forward to it, steel yourself for potential disappointment.

The choice to hire Lindelof to write an ending for your film seems ironic to me, considering the two works he’s best known for have terrible endings, both being very passive climaxes with unsatisfying and pretentious conclusions (not that he worked alone on either project).

The film is already a great challenge, considering the book it’s based on. Written by Max Brooks, World War Z covers a lot of ground in a story which is not exactly chronological, and has a lot of gaps, appearing as the personal account of one journalist covering the end of the world. It’s tough not just because of the chronology and format, however, the protagonist of the book is also very removed from the action, reporting on it much more than performing any actual action. That has to be changed to make a good film, so it’ll be interesting to see where the story has been taken, if it survives this rewrite.

World War Z’s new release date is June 21, 2013.

 

[Donut]

It does see odd to bring in Lindelof for something such as an ending. If it still sucks. I guess it falls on him ?

 

[Octoberist]

Marc Forster’s weakness as a tentpole director. Though he’s earned positive notice for films like Monster’s Ball, the critically derided Quantum of Solace was his only previous experience with a big, action-heavy project like this one. Among other things, his inexperience led to conflicts on set with the seasoned talents working under him and procrastination on major decisions like what the zombies would look like.

Consequently, a lack of a clear creative direction. Apparently the plan was to have Forster focus on character and story details while the experienced crew concentrated on action and effects, but splitting up those responsibilities only fostered confusion and dispute. “There was nobody that steered the ship,” one insider said. “When you get [a director] who can’t do it all … you get a struggle as to whose is the singular voice.”

A rushed production schedule. Sources say World War Z was given the greenlight before it was ready, perhaps thanks to producer/star Brad Pitt‘s relationship with Paramount CEO Brad Grey, and that the studio then pushed them to have it ready in time for the December 2012 release. For example, second-unit director Simon Crane was initially allotted just a third of the 60 days he wanted for second-unit work.

http://www.slashfilm.com/wrong-worl...=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+slashfilm+(/Film)

 

[Hunter Rider]

I get the feeling Foster isn't really interested in action.

 

[Bruce Malone]

After the success of a district 9 and the whole found footage genre they could have adapted world war z in a way other then a traditional action movie. That was their 1st mistake and it seems it keeps coming back to hurt them.

Why even adapt the book if they are planning to turn it into something totally different?

 

[MadVillainy]

I havent read the book yet (it's on my list), but it's a shame what seems to be happening to it. From what I heard of the book, they could've made a nice cheap District 9 type movie.
I dont see why they didnt go that route, especially since it wouldve been cheaper to make

 

[Kane52630]

Yeah, I've read parts of the book several years ago and this really should've been Neill Blomkamp's next project with a bigger budget. I have the audio book and I'm planning on listening to that since most people I heard are loving it.

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

Aside from the District 9 approach. I still think the material would have made a great miniseries (preferably on HBO).

 

[Balthus Dire]

IMO this project was kinda screwed from the get-go. The book would be tough to turn into a movie without completely changing it, and that's already pretty evident in all the reports we've seen about the movie. In addition, the book is huge in scope and a 2 hour film couldn't possibly capture everything included in the book, so the film version already had that going against it, too.

A District 9 approach as others have suggested would clearly have been the best option, but as usual movie studios think they know better and now they're like DERP when they end up with a crappy movie.

 

[MadVillainy]

IMO this project was kinda screwed from the get-go. The book would be tough to turn into a movie without completely changing it, and that's already pretty evident in all the reports we've seen about the movie. In addition, the book is huge in scope and a 2 hour film couldn't possibly capture everything included in the book, so the film version already had that going against it, too.

A District 9 approach as others have suggested would clearly have been the best option, but as usual movie studios think they know better and now they're like DERP when they end up with a crappy movie.

I always want to sit in one of those meetings after a film bombs, I think it'd be funny.

 

[Octoberist]

I've heard early on that Pitt's POed at the status of the production.

And why the hell would they double Glasglow, Scottland as Boston or whatever. It looks nothing like an American city no matter how much you dress it up.

 

[Liam_H]

Isn't that kind of expected. I mean two months of reshoots would annoy anyone especially if he has other stuff to do.

 

[Octoberist]

And with Pitt being pissed, I heard about that during their shoot in Scotland last year. There were light talks back then the production had huge issues.

 

[Octoberist]

It would funny if the President of Paramont doesn't get fired for this. After the diaster delays and reshoots of this, Hanzel and Gretel, and GI Joe 2, this is unacceptable. And this is a sign that Hollywood needs to change their scheduling and production timeframe: it's a broken system.

 

[Naked Shia]

I'm still waiting for this movie, because I love zombies flick. But While i did think it could do the book justice, I don't think it will now. And that's a shame, because the book is awesome.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

I've heard early on that Pitt's POed at the status of the production.

And why the hell would they double Glasglow, Scottland as Boston or whatever. It looks nothing like an American city no matter how much you dress it up.

Glasgow is doubling as Philadelphia actually. They tried to actually shoot the film here in Philly but the studio couldnt get the level of tax credit they wanted in order to do so.

They shoot movies and TV here all the time (in fact, Colin Farrell was shooting something right down the street last week.). Philly is a really film-friendly city. so my thought is that Paramount was just asking for way too much.

 

[The Incredible Hulk]

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

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplayl...ld-war-z-is-finethe-rest-not-so-much-20120613

“It’s a great first 45 minutes, maybe even an hour,” one source claims about the film thus far. Meanwhile, the studio themselves are candid about the status of the project. “The footage from this film looks fantastic, but we all agreed it can have a better ending,” Paramount president Adam Goodman told THR. “Getting the ending correct is essential, and we are in that creative process. 'World War Z' is a giant summer movie and we are confident it will be a global hit when it’s released June 2013.” The piece draws parallels to Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter,” but we’d argue that the very fact that Paramount has Brad Pitt front and centre rather than Taylor Kitsch guarantees that this won’t bomb quite as hard, if at all. The situation sounds kind of similar to the noises we were hearing from the “Men in Black III” production just over a year ago, and despite the disaster that looked like it would be, it's currently the fifth highest grossing movie of the year domestically so far. The rising costs won’t help, but let’s not completely write this off as a commercial venture, even if it seems to be spiraling out of control creatively.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Ouch. Well MIB3 didn't end up being the mess I thought it would be due to reshoots, so there might be hope to this.

 

[kvz5]

Reading THR's report on the disaster surrounding this movie is quite depressing:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/brad-pitt-world-war-z-production-nightmare-336422

 

[Kane52630]

Rewatching the BTS of the shooting, strange how quickly they turn into a zombie.

[YT]Ma8l5udOlvc[/YT]

 

[redhawk23]

The book was formatted after a book collecting oral accounts of WW2 and similar to that World War Z covered many different perspectives all over the world over a wide period of time. How many movies cover all of WW2 as a single traditional narrative? That's pretty much the problem this movie had from the get go. As you have all discussed a different approach would have been far better.

 

[mclay18]

I've heard early on that Pitt's POed at the status of the production.

I think some stars in Hollywood should not have say on who directs their next project. It's Pitt's fault they got Marc Forster, and then the lack of prep and accelerated production schedule made things worse.

He should be mad at himself for this mess the movie's in.