The zombie-less prequel to Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, aptly titled Army of Thieves, just got a release date on Netflix, making the film available right in time for Halloween.
Matthias Schweighöfer will star in, and direct Army of Thieves from a script co-written by Snyder and Shay Hatten. The film is set to bring back Schweighöfe's German safe-cracker Ludwig Dieter and tell his origin story just at the onset of the zombie apocalypse. While zombies are ravaging the world, what better time to do one last score and reinvent yourself with a whole lot of cash?
The film also stars Nathalie Emmanuel as the leader of a team getting ready for a big heist, and also Guz Khan, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, and Jonathan Cohen.
Army of Thieves has a lot to live up to as a prequel, even if Army of the Dead wasn't perfect, so following a movie whose entire appeal was the mix between a heist movie and a zombie movie with a straight heist movie? It feels a bit dull, but Schweighöfer's Dieter was the highlight of Snyder's original zombie caper, so perhaps this one will play more on the comedy. Besides, it's been a minute since we got a big-budget heist movie, and if Rick and Morty taught me anything, is that even dumb heist parodies end up being entertaining heist stories.
Army of Thieves will safe-crack its way onto our screens when it gets released on October 29 on Netflix.
Check out the synopsis below.
“In this prequel to Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, small-town bank teller Dieter gets drawn into the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious woman recruits him to join a crew of Interpol’s most wanted criminals, attempting to heist a sequence of legendary, impossible-to-crack safes across Europe.”