‘World War Z 2’ Will Devour Your Brains on June 9, 2017

For those interested in film industry inside baseball, World War Z was genuinely fascinating. The production was plagued with one disaster after another, Brad Pitt clashed with director Marc Forster, and the final 40 minutes of the film were completely scrapped, rewritten from scratch, and reshot. And yet the finished film was pretty good and a big financial success. In fact, it’s the highest grossing film of Pitt’s career so far, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s back for the sequel, which has officially landed a release date.

According to Variety, World War Z 2 (which hopefully won’t be called World War Z 2 because yowza, that title is unpleasing to the eye) will open on June 9, 2017. That weekend is already occupied by 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four 2, but you just know that Paramount saw that day, said “There’s not gonna be a Fantastic Four 2” and muscled their way in.

Not surprisingly Forster won’t be back; instead The Impossible director J.A. Bayona will take over the franchise, working from a script by Locke writer Steven Knight. So, what’s World War Z 2 about? That’s the big question, especially since the first film had a surprisingly happy ending for a zombie apocalypse tale. Of course, there are still millions of zombies to kill and a civilization to rebuild. And maybe, just maybe, the sequel can actually use Max Brooks’ terrific source novel as inspiration this time around. The chapters about how humanity ultimately takes back the planet from the zombie horde are truly fascinating and full of crazy details. The World War Z sequel could do far worse than stealing from the book that gave this franchise its title.