Paramount Pictures has released a large batch of high-resolution images from director Marc Forster’s large-scale zombie pic World War Z.  The film stars Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee who traverses the globe in a race to stop a growing zombie pandemic that threatens to put an end to humanity.  The pic’s production troubles have not exactly been a secret, but Pitt has been doing everything he can to promote the film so one assumes he’s happy with the finished product.  The prospect of crafting a globe-trotting horror film on a tentpole scale still intrigues me, so here’s hoping everything came together in the end.

Hit the jump to take a look at the images.  The film also stars Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, David Morse, and Daniella Kertesz.  World War Z opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on June 21st.

With director Marc Forster’s World War Z arriving in theaters June 21st, Paramount recently invited a number of reporters to watch about 15 minutes of the movie with an in-person introduction by Brad Pitt.  If you haven’t seen the latest trailer, Pitt stars as a United Nations employee who traverses the globe in a race to stop a growing Zombie pandemic that threatens to put an end to humanity.  The film also stars Mireille Enos, Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, and David Morse.

As most of you know, I’m not a fan of spoiling a movie, so don’t look for a shot-by-shot description of the footage.  However, I will say that the footage was loaded with great character moments and kick ass action, took place in various locations around the world, and showcased the main difference between World War Z and other zombie movies: the undead in World War Z move fast and work together to reach a goal.  In one of the clips, we watched as a huge hoard of zombies worked together to get over a wall.  It was a hell of a sequence that looked great on the big screen.  Hit the jump for a lot more.

Paramount has released a new trailer for director Marc Forster’s (Quantum of Solace) zombie apocalypse film World War Z.  The film stars Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee who traverses the globe in a race to stop a growing Zombie pandemic that threatens to put an end to humanity.  This trailer does a better job at humanizing Pitt’s character as a family man as well as hinting at the plot arc he’ll have to follow.  While the CG still looks a bit suspect, the zombie hordes of World War Z have proven to be not only resilient but rather resourceful in getting around.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film stars Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, and David Morse.  World War Z opens on June 21, 2013.

A new poster has been released for Marc Forster‘s World War Z.  Per the brief official synopsis, “The story revolves around United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), who traverses the world in a race against time to stop a pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.”  What is the word missing from that sentence?  If you said, “Zombie”, you win a lifetime supply of shotguns.  Like we saw in the trailer, World War Z is big on selling zombies as a horde rather than gruesome individuals, which they can’t really get away with since it’s a PG-13 movie.  I’m sure audience can figure out that it’s a zombie pandemic, but these are zombies we’re not used to seeing: pile-zombies.  Fear the pile.

Hit the jump to check out the poster, and click here to see some great fan-made posters.  The film also stars Mireille Enos, Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, and David Morse.  World War Z opens June 21st and the new trailer hits tonight at midnight.

And yet another Super Bowl TV spot has landed online early ahead of Sunday’s game.  Paramount Pictures has unveiled the new TV spot for director Marc Forster’s zombie apocalypse thriller World War Z, and it’s chock-full of the living dead.  The film is based on Max Brooks’ novel of the same name and stars Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee “who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.”  This spot highlights flashes of big action, zombie hoardes, and Brad Pitt, which sounds like a swell combination when marketing to an audience as large as the Super Bowl’s.

Hit the jump to watch the new spot, and check back here on Collider Sunday night for a round-up of the commercials and movie ads that played during the game.  World War Z opens on June 21st.

The first trailer for director Marc Forster’s zombie apocalypse film World War Z has been released.  Things go to Hell rather quickly for the Lane family when the zombie apocalypse wreaks havoc on an otherwise mundane rush hour.  I get that Forster is accentuating the “world” aspect of the film and certainly establishes the pandemic as a global event, but the cut of the trailer paints the horde of the undead as more of an overwhelming flood observed from a bird’s eye view.  I’m hoping to see a little more of the immediate danger, but this glimpse certainly gets the heart pumping.  (I think we’ve all had enough of the Zimmer horns though…)

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film stars Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, and David Morse.  World War Z opens on June 21st, 2013.

The first trailer for the zombie apocalypse drama World War Z is set to debut later today, but Paramount has gotten a jump on things and released the first official image of Brad Pitt from the film.  The adaptation of the Max Brooks zombie novel has gone through a few rough patches in production, with the release date pushed from this coming December to next summer and the third act having been rewritten by Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods) and reshot after production had already wrapped.  We got a very brief preview of the trailer the other day that promised a terrifying shit ton of zombies, so hopefully the full film delivers when all is said and done.

Hit the jump to take a look at the image, and check back here on Collider later today to watch the first trailer.  Directed by Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace), the film also stars Anthony Mackie, Matthew Fox, Mireille Enos, and James Badge Dale.  World War Z opens on June 21st, 2013.

Director Marc Forster is continuing his track record of choosing varied material, as he’s now looking to helm a Disney feature.  The Wrap reports that the Quantum of Solace director is in negotiations to direct Imagining Nathan, a film that revolves around a character who, as a six-year-old, “retreats into a fantasy world after his parents are killed.”  The film takes place thirty years later, where his sister is trying to help him escape his demons after being diagnosed with a condition that causes him to live in a cartoon-like world.

It sounds much more akin to Forster’s Finding Neverland than his more recent, action-oriented material.  He most recently helmed the Brad Pitt-fronted zombie pic World War Z, which has encountered some pretty significant production problems.  Extensive reshoots have been scheduled and rumors have swirled that Pitt and Forster aren’t exactly on speaking terms.  Nevertheless, the film remains a promising summer 2013 tentpole for Paramount Pictures.  No word on when Imagining Nathan might get going, but it sounds like a nice change of pace for Forster so I’m eager to see what he makes of it.

In the long line of complications accompanying the adaptation of the Max Brooks’ novel, World War Z, yet another writer has come on to hash out the script.  Damon Lindelof was previously reported to be working on the ending of the troubled picture starring Brad Pitt, but it’s now being reported that his Lost co-writer, Drew Goddard, actually did the majority of the writing.  Lindelof apparently dreamed up the possible ending of the film but ran out of time to do the actual scripting.  That chore fell to Goddard, who recently co-wrote Cabin in the Woods with Joss Whedon and also scripted the Robopocalypse adaptation for Steven Spielberg. Hit the jump for more on the fate of World War Z.

Paramount almost didn’t make a PG-13 blockbuster adaptation of Max Brooks‘ zombie novel World War Z, and that would have probably been for the best.  The project, which was envisioned as the first part of a potential trilogy, would have been dead if the movie didn’t get a co-financier, but the studio eventually found partners in producer Graham King‘s GK Films and David Ellison‘s Skydance Productions.  Now they’re all paying the price as the production has spun wildly out of control, soared to more than a $170 million budget, requires five weeks of complex reshoots (others have put the number at 7-8 weeks), and brought in Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof to do re-writes on a picture that won’t be able to get back in front of cameras until September.

So how did production on World War Z go so horribly wrong?  Hit the jump for more.

Writers are brought on to perform rewrites on projects all the time, but it’s not every day that a scribe is hired to rewrite a film’s script after the film has already been shot.  Such is the case with director Marc Forster’s (Quantum of Solace) zombie apocalypse pic World War Z.  The film is based on Max Brooks’ novel of the same name and stars Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee “who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.”  Production took place last year in various European locales, with Paramount even considering a potential trilogy based off of the dailies they were seeing.

Back in March, it was announced that the film was vacating its December 2012 release date for the summer date of June 21^st, 2013.  The move didn’t turn many heads, as most assumed that Paramount thought the zombie pic would do better business in the heart of the summer rather than in the midst of the crowded holiday season of 2012.  Heads did turn, however, when rumblings began that the film was set to undergo some massive 6-7 week reshoots later this year.  Hit the jump for more.

Despite not making very good movies, Marc Forster keeps getting signed for major projects.  He helmed the upcoming “adaptation” World War Z (the final film will probably have little resemblance to Max Brooks’ novel) and earlier this month we reported that he had signed on to direct the adaptation of David Fisher‘s non-fiction novel The War Magician.  Deadline is now reporting that Universal has signed Forster to direct an adaptation of the graphic novel Cowboy Ninja Viking for his next movie.  Zombieland screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese wrote the screenplay for Disney, but the studio “deemed it too edgy” and Universal picked it up in turnaround.  Naturally, Universal is intent on spawning Cowboy Ninja Viking into a franchise.

Hit the jump for details on what sounds like fanboy word salad.

Marc Forster will be moving from a war against zombies to a war against Nazis.  Variety reports that Forster has signed on to direct the adaptation of David Fisher‘s non-fiction novel The War Magician.  The story centers on real-life British magician Jasper Maskelyne, who was able to use his illusions (“tricks are what a whore does for money…or cocaine”) to aid the Allied forces by hiding locations like the Suez Canal, and creating phantom armies.  His inventions are still being used in modern warfare.

Part of me hopes that the story isn’t as good as it sounds since Forster has consistently underwhelmed me.  The only time he really impressed me was Stranger Than Fiction, and the last of that good will dried up when he decided an African child being blown up needed musical accompaniment to sell the drama in Machine Gun Preacher.  Maybe his upcoming film, World War Z, will be a turn in the right direction even though it’s a PG-13 zombie movie that will probably have almost no resemblance to the book.

Assuming the world is still around on December 21^st of this year, you may find me in the theater watching World War Z, the Paramount Pictures thriller starring Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee racing to stop a zombie pandemic. Loosely based on the novel by Max Brooks, World War Z was initially thought to be a one-shot adaptation, but it looks as if Paramount has other ideas. In an L.A. Times article about Pitt’s career, the actor discussed his work on the most expensive zombie movie in Hollywood. Director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) and the studio both view World War Z as a potential franchise for Pitt, eyeing a trilogy that blends the realism of the Jason Bourne franchise with the undead terror of The Walking Dead. Hit the jump for more.

Now here’s something that doesn’t happen every day: a SWAT team raided the Budapest set of Marc Forster’s big-budget zombie pic World War Z earlier today and seized a number of weapons that were being used in the film. Police confiscated 85 fully-functional weapons (read: not prop guns) from a warehouse that was being used by the production. Most of the weapons were of the automatic, military-style assault variety which is a very big no-no to transport internationally without authorization. Hit the jump for the full story, including star Brad Pitt’s reaction.