Marc Forster Won’t Return for World War Z Sequel

Posted by on October 3rd, 2013   Filed under: Horror, Rumours
Source: Bleeding Cool

WORLD WAR Z

At this point, I don’t think it’s a secret that World War Z went from being a potential disaster and complete write-off for Paramount to being one of the biggest hits of the year. After all the costly rewrites and reshoots, the movie ended up with the biggest opening weekend of Brad Pitt’s career and ultimately grossed over $530 million worldwide. Whether that is due to the quality of the film or the popularity of zombies remains to be seen, but just days after the movie hit theatres, we already started hearing about the possibility of a sequel. Now we have further confirmation of that fact, although there is one new detail to share: it sounds like director Marc Forster won’t be involved. Not a huge surprise, I suppose, but could it hurt the sequel’s chances for success?

The news comes courtesy of a recent feature on Brad Pitt over at THR, where they simply note that “director Marc Forster won’t be back” for a sequel to World War Z. Pitt also had this to say about the status of a potential follow-up:

“We are talking about it… We are going to investigate a script. We have a lot of ideas we will cull from. Nobody is writing just yet, but we are compiling our ideas.”

It is unclear if Forster passed on the project by choice, but it’s worth noting that there were various reports that Pitt and Forster had stopped talking during the production of the first film. Although Forster had some previous experience with big blockbusters (Quantum of Solace) it seems like he’s more comfortable dealing with smaller art house films and we can only assume that the production of World War Z was an extremely stressful time. I don’t think too many people will be disappointed by this news, but still, the fact that he helped pull the movie out of the abyss has to count for something. Who would you like to see direct a World War Z sequel?



  • Gerry

    The probable reason WWZ wasn’t as good as it could’ve been was the rewrites by different writers and apparently going into shooting the film while still writing it.
    Trusting one writer and not giving them numerous notes when you don’t know how to write would probably work.

    I read the book which was really good. I think there’s scope for a really good sequel involving a white South African apartheid war criminal type’s tactics and the broad thrust of how the zombies were defeated worldwide.

    A good script is the only reason the sequel will be good. As usual the director isn’t that important, with a talented TV jobber probably doing as good a job as a big name hollywood type.

    Will Hollywood realise that? Of course not, with the writer(s) being seen as little more than glorified runners / gophers.

  • PlanBFromOuterSpace

    How about Brett Ratner? No one likes to admit that the guy knows what he’s doing, but he’s shown that he can be brought on to a troubled project (not that the sequel is in trouble yet or anything) and come in on time and on budget without really rocking the boat. He catches a lot of unnecessary flack for the third X-Men flick, but when Fox was more concerned with hitting a release date (that was set in stone before the game of musical director’s chairs began) than making the movie that SHOULD have been made, he was able to swoop in and make something passable. The script had all sorts of problems, sure, but he didn’t write the damn thing. He’s a good gun for hire, good with action, and pretty good at keeping things moving, which is something a large-scale zombie flick certainly needs to do. As mentioned before, this isn’t exactly a director’s franchise, but Brett Ratner is hardly accused of being a visionary, and I’d like to see him get another crack at a big blockbuster franchise flick.