Brad Pitt’s mega-movie “World War Z” has had a bumpy road.
In the latest issue of Vanity Fair, producers of the zombie film discussed the complications the movie has experienced, which include delays, budgeting woes and having to reshoot its entire ending.
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President of production at Paramount Marc Evans told the magazine he realized there was a major issue with the film after the screening of the director’s cut.
“It was, like, Wow. The ending of our movie doesn’t work,” Evans said. “I believed in that moment we needed to reshoot the movie. We were going to have long, significant discussions to fix this.”
In the end, the team decided that just the ending of the film needed to be redone. The problem? The film had already run way over budget.
Evans said the movie ran into money woes early on, while filming in Malta. He said the wrap-up crew found a neglected stack of purchase orders that totaled millions of dollars. The extra money spent was an “unthinkable action,” he said.
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“It was literally insane. Adam [Goodman, president of the Paramount Film Group] and I believed we’d gotten out of Malta good, and I found out we weren’t. That is a nightmare.”
Screenwriter Damon Lindelof’s said he was impressed Paramount supported reshooting the ending of the film after so much money had already been spent. But he said the company “completely and totally embraced” the much-needed changes to the film.
One thing Paramount was strict about, however, was the rating of the film.
“There was always a challenge to keep it PG-13, where Brad wanted to go for it,” a person involved in the film told Vanity Fair. “The question was: How graphic can it be and get the rating?”
The source added that Pitt “just wanted it to be cool.”
The zombie flick ended up costing about $200 million, and it is set for a June 2013 release, according to IMDB.
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