‘World War Z’ Reshoots Could Amount to Over Half the Film
There's something in the water in Hollywood lately, as we've seen a number of big budget movies get bounced around schedules and delayed for six months or more. One of the biggest is the Brad Pitt-starring 'World War Z,' which had a $175 Million budget and is going in for seven weeks of reshoots. When hiring a script doctor to rewrite the ending, Paramount showed them footage. 52 minutes worth.
That doesn't mean they just have 52 minutes of useable footage, that could be what was best cut together, and it's possible they have more. But with a seven week reshoot (and many feature length films are shot in three or four weeks), it seems as if they are rebooting an unfinished film.
This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, who mention this in their piece about '47 Ronin' and its production troubles. Reshoots in and of themselves are not inherently bad, are often necessary and many films do them. But often when journalists write about those reshoots in a negative fashion, it's because they've heard the film has problems. Look no further than 'John Carter' for proof of that (or confirmation bias, one way or the other).
Miramax used to have a deep closet of films that would sit around for years, but those productions were usually done on the cheap. Of late we've seen films that cost in the $200 Million dollar range get moved, or bumped from the more profitable months of the year to places like January (which is still considered a "dumping ground" period of the year). Currently 'World War Z' is set for a June 2013 release, but if it continues to be a troubled production - like '47 Ronin' - we could see it bumped again.