When most of the third act was recorded, we had to start from scratch.
This is a natural process in large scale film production. After shooting the film, you have to turn the cameras back on to shoot the famous ‘reshoots’. i.e., sequences or scenes that must be entered into the story to add things that are missing, correct them, or replace them. While this is common in a ‘blockbuster’, there are also special cases in which ‘reshoots’ have been used to change the entire ending of the film.
That’s what happened with World War Z. The 2013 film directed by Marc Forster that adapted the Max Brooks novel of the same name was darker and more epic than what you’ve seen in the movies. The story follows Gerry Lane, played by Brad Pitt. The protagonist is a renowned researcher who, like the rest of the world, finds himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. His mission is to trace the origin of the virus and attempt to eradicate it in order to protect the future of humanity.
In the original epilogue, Gerry and his partner Sezen go to Russia and join forces to fight the zombies. Time passes and when winter arrives, the hero leads troops in impressive battles. Furthermore, he has managed to contact his wife, Karin, who has become a prostitute in order to survive. Gerry does not want to lose his family, so he travels to Siberia to find the whereabouts of his wife in America.
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As you can see, this is a much more pessimistic outcome than the movie that hit theaters. Later, Gerry comes across a lab and discovers a peculiarity about zombies: they only attack people who are not sick or weak.
Most of the first ending we told you about was shot, so when Paramount decided they wanted something lighter and more optimistic, they had to throw everything out to shoot the second ending. and the cameras had to be turned back on. These ‘reshoots’ cost around $25 million. The film’s budget grew from $175 million to $200 million. And that, as published by IndieWire, some of Paramount’s rival studios reported that the actual budget was between 2010 and $250 million.
Paramount Pictures
“In the original ending, after the Israel sequence and the plane crash, Gerry is in Russia and what he finds in the lab is the same story as what he finds in Russia but he applies his theory on the battlefield,” Forster he said. Movies.com. “We never finished that shoot because we all agreed that after Israel and the plane, you’re tired of fighting and you want the movie to be quiet and you don’t want to put me in another big fight.”
The director also noted that some Russian battle scenes appear in a quick montage near the end of the film. However, the complete sequence would never see the light of day. “I don’t think you’ll see the Russia scene because we never finished it. We never spent any money on special effects. Once we shot it, we cut it quickly, everyone agreed it was It was huge and exhausting and it was better to take the easy route,” said the director.
World War Z grossed over $540 million worldwide, and while it was well received by audiences, it didn’t quite win over critics. A sequel has been talked about as a possibility since its premiere, but it never came to fruition. And it doesn’t look like that will ever happen again.
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