Those dudes over at AICN get all the cool stuff. They got a first look at the script for WORLD WAR Z, the adaptation of Max Brooks fantastic zombie novel fro a year or so back.
I loved the book, devoured the audio book and I know that the film version is going to just kick major ass. Just to prove my point check out this snipit from AICN where they lament on and on about the script they read.
Hats off, then, to the folks at Plan B, which is Brad Pitt’s
production company. They were the ones who optioned the novel, and they
hired J. Michael Straczynski to adapt it, fresh off his success on THE
CHANGELING.
Now, with THE CHANGELING coming out this November as a Clint
Eastwood-directed prestige picture, JMS is finally poised for that
breakthrough in features that he hasn't had yet. I hear Eastwood’s
movie really works.insert
Now who's going to step up and direct WORLD WAR Z and turn it into
the Oscar bait it should be? Peter Jackson? Sam Raimi? This demands a
big name who can handle a big picture. This isn’t just a good
adaptation of a difficult book... it’s a genre-defining piece of work
that could well see us all arguing about whether or not a zombie movie
qualifies as “Best Picture” material.
The book is an oral history of the great zombie wars, compiled by a
nameless editor as part of a government report. The book is all of his
unfiltered data, since much of it was censored from the official
report. That’s all the narrative that the book offered, but it was
enough for JMS to use, and the result is much sadder than I would have
expected. In the first five pages, we see GERRY LANE collecting
stories, and the first two interviews are with a flight attendant and a
border guard. Both manage to play as horror shock beats, but the way
they’re told also sets the tone right away... JMS is after the human
truth underneath the horror, and in a way, that makes it much, much
harder to take.
The world of the film reminds me of CHILDREN OF MEN on the page.
Realistic but set in the near-future, in the aftermath of the zombie
wars. We see a flashback to Gerry being given his assignment to write a
report about “where the system worked, where it didn’t, how and in what
ways the various organizational infrastructures failed.” It’s a
politically shitty job because no one wants to know that they were
responsible for anything that went wrong. Gerry’s hesitant because it’s
going to take at least six months away from his family, just as the
world is starting to right itself. He takes the job, and as he travels
to his first interview, we see how hard travel has become. I hate going
through airport security these days, but at least I don’t have to strip
naked and subject myself to a blood test. Yet.
JMS does a great job of etching the details of a world that has
already faced its darkest moments and is now trying to put things back
in order. His first stop is China, and right away, he can see that it’s
not going to be an easy job. His first subject, Dr. Tsai, is supposed
to be interviewed through a “translator,” despite the fact that he
speaks flawless English.
Tsai’s account of his first encounter with zombies at New Dachang is
awful and horrific, and right away, it’s apparent that a combination of
bureaucracy and military strategy is responsible for a sort of passive
evil, and Tsai feels enormous guilt about it. He leads Gerry to his
next interview, which leads him to his next, and one of the things that
the script does so well is depict survivors who are starting to wonder
if survival is a victory of any kind. There’s a story about black
market organs that is just brutal, an off-the-record conversation with
a CIA friend, and an insane beach sequence that I can’t wait to see on
film. All in the first 50 pages.
Now we're talking. We'll keep a real close eye on this one and let you know if and when it gets on the fast track.
