Paramount has announced that it’s halting preproduction on the sequel to the World War Z movie. The sequel was originally scheduled to go into production this year.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film was put on hold over budgetary issues, and it’s currently unknown whether the movie will resume development at some point or simply be canned completely. This isn’t the first problem the second World War Z movie has faced. Originally directed by J.A. Bayona and scheduled for 2017, the movie lost its director in 2016 and it took a year to secure another one in David Fincher–who Brad Pitt really wanted. Shooting was continuously pushed and rescheduled throughout the following year, before finally settling on a planned production date in spring/early-summer 2019.
2013’s World War Z is a movie adaption, starring Brad Pitt, of Max Brooks’ 2006 novel of the same name. The novel is a collection of accounts from various people of different social, religious, and political backgrounds that survived a zombie apocalypse that occurred 17 years prior to the narrative’s present day events. As opposed to a recollection of past events from multiple perspectives, the World War Z movie takes place during the zombie apocalypse from one perspective, and tells a more action-focused story about one man’s efforts to find a means for humanity to survive the plague.
Despite the differences, the movie was mostly well-received. However, it too faced considerable production difficulties. The film went massively over-budget and was consistently behind schedule in terms of development, resulting in the release being delayed by several months. Nevertheless, the movie still managed to made $540 million worldwide, making it the most successful zombie movie of all time.