'World War Z' Emerges from Financing Struggles; Zombie Film Could Go Into Production in June

Much like their subjects, the zombie genre won't go down until you forcefully remove its head, and even then ten more may rise to take its place. What emerged in the early 2000s as a sudden renaissance has proved to have remarkable staying power.

I remember in 2004, when both Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" remake and Edgar Wright's breakthrough film "Shaun of the Dead" hit, the general assessment was that zombies were the new pirates, which in turn were the new ninjas. Stock geek types were rising and falling in waves, and we all wondered what it'd be next year - robots, perhaps? I'll admit nobody saw vampires coming.

Yet through the years, the zombies have remained, and AMC's new hit series, "The Walking Dead," is proof that people aren't anywhere near being sick of them. Several new zombie films are in production, including "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," a "Zombieland" sequel, and a Ryan Reynolds action comedy calling "R.I.P.D." What you don't see a lot of on the production slate, aside from another season of "The Walking Dead," is another honest-to-goodness, straight-on horror take on the zombie. The general consensus seems to be that Edgar Wright saw the future, and it is zombie comedy. Zombedies, if you will.

One serious zombie film that's long been on the backburner is an adaptation of Max Brooks' zombie landmark, "World War Z."

The novel tells the story of the zombie apocalypse after it happened by those who survived it, and is absolutely enormous in scale. The film would likely par that down a bit - though it's hard to resist putting zombies walking the ocean floor and eating whales onscreen - but nevertheless Paramount is looking at a $125 million price tag on a hard-R horror epic.

And after Universal understandably passed on their own ungodly expensive R-rated horror epic (no matter how awesome "At the Mountains of Madness" would have been, it wasn't that surprising a decision), it looked like Paramount was going to finally unload "World War Z."

But then those most heroic of film financiers, the Ellison siblings, were called upon to save the day, and things look to be progressing. Deadline is reporting that David Ellison's Skydance, and as many as two other producing partners, are being called upon to shoulder the cost of the Brad Pitt-starring, Marc Forster-directed epic. Should this go through, and things are looking pretty positive, production will begin as soon as June. There's still a question of whether or not they'll go for the R rating, but it's sort of hard to imagine a zombie film without way too much blood.

A lot of people have called Forster's abilities into question after his choppy show with "Quantum of Solace," his first action film, but I maintain that "World War Z" isn't an action film as such. Forster's a very capable director of drama, and did some things with the camera in "Finding Neverland" that will blow your mind - "World War Z" is certainly something new for him, but I'm intrigued where he'll go with it.