David Fincher's Next Possible Project: A Sequel to World War Z

Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and now, maybe, World War Z 2 or World War Z II or World War 2 but the 2 looks like a Z…or whatever.

There were rumors last year, but now Variety is reporting that David Fincher is close to a deal and Paramount Pictures is expected to greenlight the sequel to the 2013 Brad Pitt zombie film in the next few weeks. Apparently, Pitt approached many directors before finally settling on (or strongly convincing) his long-time collaborator Fincher to jump aboard the project. Production on WWZ2 would begin in early 2018.

The original film had a number of setbacks — release date delays due to massive rewrites and reshoots. It’s going to be interesting to see Fincher — who is no fan of studio execs and called the heads of 20th Century Fox “a bunch of morons” on the set of Alien 3— tackle a sequel to a successful-enough zombie movie. There’s a list of failed Fincher projects that’s about three times larger than his completed work. Remember that time negotiations fell through on Steve Jobs over $10 million dollar upfront fees and control over marketing? Or how about the two shows at HBO that were nixed over a number of issues, one set to star Rooney Mara, while the other was a comedic, semi-biographical look at the music video industry? That all happened in the last three years.

But imagine a zombie film under the complete creative control of David Fincher. Assuredly it’ll be more finely tuned than the 2013 original, which was clearly bound together haphazardly to assure a summer release date. And will this sequel be rated R? The original was a toothless PG-13, but with the success of Deadpool and Logan, an R-rated David Fincher zombie movie could be a thing that might actually happen.

Zombies are so 10 years ago, but if there’s any person who can bring zombies…back form the dead, it’s David Fincher.

But, also, don’t get your hopes up. This could be added to the long list of David Fincher no-gos; there might be a disagreement over money or advertising or who knows what. At least we have Fincher’s Mindhunter series to look forward to this year.