Back in February of 2019, Paramount cancelled David Fincher’s sequel to the 2013 zombie flick “World War Z.” It came as a shock to many considering Fincher had implied that it would be his next film.
Paramount halted the film, while it was deep in pre-production mode, due to “budgetary issues.” The sequel was supposed to start shooting that spring in Atlanta.
In a new interview with GQ Magazine UK, Fincher actually sounds relieved that his “World War Z” sequel never got off the ground. It turns out that the sequel’s storyline was was going to be very similar to HBO’s “The Last of Us.”
“Well, it was a little like ‘The Last of Us. I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because ‘The Last of Us’ has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff. In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite … they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”
There have been no efforts to revive the film, at least as of this moment. Soon after the film got canned, Fincher signed his big contract with Netflix and he’s been making movies and TV shows with the streaming giant ever since.
Let us remember, Fincher has taken on numerous different projects over the years that ended up never getting made. He’s known to bail on things at the flick of a switch, mostly due to his high budget demands. Whatever happened to “Strangers on A Train”? “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”? “Jobs”? “The Girl Who Played With Fire”?
Fincher’s latest film, “The Killer,” is set to be released theatrically this Friday. It will be made available to stream via Netflix on November 10th.
The theatrical version runs 108 minutes, so we're talking a nearly 2-hour-10-minute cut of a movie that works because it's lean, and I'm not sure anyone needs that.