Rodrigo Perez
February 6, 2019
The Playlist
“Movement is life,” Brad Pitt‘s Gerry Lane famously said, advising survivors in Paramount‘s 2013 zombie/outbreak movie “World War Z.” Momentum is everything in Hollywood, and perhaps a lack of it hurt “World War Z”‘s chances for a sequel, because it’s now curtains for the followup film. Sources close to the project for years tell us that Paramount Pictures pulled the plug on director David Fincher‘s film last night.
The film’s budget was definitely an issue but only to a degree. Fincher and his team were proposing something less than the budget of the original ($190 million according to Box Office Mojo, before the costly reshoots). However, Paramount’s known about this figure since at least last year and had hemmed and hawed about the project for months. One might think it not entirely coincidental that Paramount, which makes far fewer films than the average studio, just designated a lot of money for two significant blockbusters: “Mission Impossible 7” & ‘8‘ which will arrive in the summer of 2021 and 2022, according to their official release dates.
Paramount simply dragged their heels, at one point eyeing a 2018 or 2019 summer release, but never feeling bold enough to put it back on the schedule. Pitt, who has worked with Fincher several times, began to court Fincher for the job back in August of 2016 and a few months later the director agreed and started to look for writers to develop a new script. Dennis Kelly, the creator and writer of the original U.K. “Utopia” series—which Fincher almost adapted himself for HBO— was hired to rewrite the script from Steven Knight.
The officially untitled “World War Z 2” was roughly aiming for a summer shoot—Fincher is currently still busy editing “Mindhunter” season two for Netflix—but the writing might have been on the wall given how tentative Paramount was with the project.
Paramount Scraps David Fincher’s ‘World War Z 2’ over Budget Concerns
Adam Chitwood
February 6, 2019
Collider
The Fincher Analyst 
Well… fuck! I would have loved to see a WWZ movie from him. Actually I would love to see any movie from him. But somehow Fincher has no luck making movies anymore.
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Well, it’s not only Fincher. It’s a whole industry shift. Big traditional studios hardly produce stuff for grownups anymore. Netflix and Amazon do. For a while, Fincher’s been trying to produce films for mature audiences with a commercial appeal for theaters, but I guess it’s not going to happen.
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How David Fincher’s ‘Dragon Tattoo’ Marked the End of the Big-Budget Adult Drama
Adam Chitwood
November 7, 2018
Collider
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Did the executives ever see Seven or Panic Room? Fincher can certainly handle suspense. Did the execs not gathrer around and look at something like the Lake Berry scene from Zodiac and think, you know this guy can chill you to the bone with a set piece.
I just caught “The Girl In The Spider Web” the other day and I was very depressed after watching that. You have this assumption being outside the system that the people who make movies know what they are doing and they don’t. They actually thought to give the sequel to someone else. In the first 5mins of the movie a little girl dives off the side of cliff, lands on her feet and takes off running in the snow and I was DONE with the movie, this is what this going to be now? Universal Soldier by Reny Harlin had more restraint. The horror is realizing that that is what the studio wanted Fincher to do with the first movie, they wanted a superhuman movie where Lisbeth would dodge bullets and jump out of the way of exploding fireballs.
I guess at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter the first movie worked very well but it might have been material way below Fincher’s standard anyway. Its better to be home watching Mindhunter than treking to the theater to see the garbage that is out there most of the year.
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Amen, brother!
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