Is Paramount finally gearing up to go ahead with their long in development adaptation of the best seller World War Z? Max Brooks, the author of the book, seems to think so.
Brooks spoke with Fear Net recently and gave them this update –
Paramount just renewed the option for World War Z, for half the time and twice the money, so that might signal interest. We still got our director, Marc Forster, who’s raring to go. Were all waiting on Matt Carnahan’s new draft, which should come in a month or so. Once that comes in then I think it probably will have to be tweaked and brought to the studio but we’re sort of zeroing in on that moment where Paramount has to say yes or no.
Well, he certainly sounds a bit more upbeat about the project than he did when we talked to him last summer at the Philadelphia WizardWorld show. Then, he sounded a bit disappointed that the initial screenplay for the adaption written by Babylon 5 television series creator J. Michale Straczynski was undergoing a rewrite at the hands of another writer at the insistence of recently hired director Marc Forster. (Brooks is an avowed Babylon 5 fan.)
And while Brooks sees the renewal as a sign that the studio is seriously considering the film a greenlight, it is by no means a sure thing.
I think the size of the book, the scope of the book, makes it hard to produce, in that this thing’s gotta be done right or it just can’t be done. You can’t do a cheap and dirty World War Z. It’s a world war, and I think that makes studio executives nervous. I think it limits its options, so that’s running against it.
