World War Z (2013) was one of many zombie themed movies and started like most of them do, with the outbreak. When I saw this, I was not impressed and lost interest. Somehow, by the end of the movie, I was sucked in and the characters had grown on me through their experiences that I only have watched. After the first time I watched it, I had to watch it again to get the full experience. At this point, I was sold that it was one of the better zombie themed movies to be made. In fact, they can not go wrong with a sequel (Z2).
*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***
For those of you who didn’t get the opportunity to watch it, I will give you the less thrilling recap. Former UN field agent, Gerry Lane, is with his family in Philadelphia when the city gets overrun by zombies. Him and his family were in a car and they watched people turning into zombies all around them. They fled to the closest building and harbored in a small apartment with another family. Once they figured out what was happening, an old friend of Gerry’s from the UN reached out and offered to send in a helicopter. Gerry’s family struggled to make it to the roof but they did and rode the helicopter to a military aircraft carrier. In order for Gerry’s family to stay on the helicopter, he had to do his part and help out. He traveled across the world to a military sight where it was believed the pandemic began. He spoke with a poisoner there that said Jerusalem already had a wall surrounding it. He then took the plane there and began asking questions to the person who built the massive wall. As he is learning more about how they knew of the virus, the infected start climbing the wall because people are making noise due to celebration. The infected make it over the wall and as Gerry tries to escape, he sees the infected avoiding an old man and a mal nourished boy. He determines that they are not healthy enough hosts for the virus, so the infected do not bother them. He travels to a research lab in Europe so he can tell them what he knows. Once there, he tests his theory through a dangerous and thrilling experiment. His theory was correct and the scientists there develop a vaccine and send it out.
This sounds like a nice ending and the loose ends are tied, but the vaccine only prevents more from being infected. There are still millions if not billions of zombies running around the world. The sequel could dive into this issue. It could go into the direction of curing everyone or could lean more towards a survival movie. There are so many different variations and directions the writers can go in, that their is no issue writing another.
The original movie’s plot was changed several times and even resulted in the re-shooting of certain scenes. This did raise the budget significantly from $130 million to $190 million. Fortunately, the movie did do well in the box office and grossed a whopping $540 million! After realizing how much money was made on the first movie, Paramount Pictures almost instantly announced a sequel. The sequel was written but various complications halted production and it does not seem like it will be out in the near future.
The production company stopped things, but if the people really want a sequel, I am sure they will pick it up again. The movie had stellar reviews when it came out, but there would have to be another surge of excitement to get Paramount interested again.
This is what the people had to say after the first movie:
“Light, family friendly and internationally marketable.”
“It’s NOT a zombie movie… It’s ten times better than that!”
Now do YOU want a sequel? Comment below and it may just happen 🙂
I never saw the movie but it sounds interesting. If it did well and the reviews were good, then I think it should get a sequel. Was not it based on a book? Maybe that is the reason the sequel was cancelled.
Wow this brought back some memories. I watched this when I was kind of little and was absolutely terrified, I need to watch it again though. I wish they did come out with a sequel because it would have been epic. Definitely worth a blog post.