‘World War Z’ Film Project Gets Another Writer
July 18, 2009 by tcgames
Paramount and Brad Pitt’s Plan B have been developing the rather terrific zombie novel by Max Books called World War Z into a film, and they’ve changed horses mid-stream. Brooks recently talked to Fangoria and announced that J. Michael Straczynski, the Changeling and Babylon 5 writer who had thrown together one adaptation, had been usurped.
According to Brooks, Matthew Carnahan, brother of Joe and co-writer of State of Play and writer of The Kingdom, has been hired to give World War Z a fresh set of eyes. He’s not exactly known for this kind of thing, so it would be interesting to compare the two scrips at some point.
The author seems pleased with the change, in large part because the costs keep mounting for the studio, so surely they’ve got to do something with the movie, right?
That’s not the buzz as I have heard it. From what I have seen in other interviews Brooks was *pissed* that the writing change was made. He has a lot of respect for J. Michael Straczynski, and the script he has created.
I read Brooks’ entire quote, here it is:
“They say it’s a positive move because they’re very excited, but the truth is, it’s also positive because they just paid him a buttload of money, and [with] the money they paid him, the money they paid Straczynski and the money they’ve paid me, they’ve really dug themselves a deep hole, so they better make this thing!”
Positive? Not so much. Cynical? Most likely.