World War Z is one of the more famously troubled productions we've been following lately, with delays happening before production even began, then a pushed-back release date and, most recently, seven weeks of reshoots and a complete rewrite of the screenplay. With the source material being Max Brooks's excellent faux-historical novel, World War Z seemed to still have the potential to pull it together and make something of itself, but the latest news from the set suggests things are only going further downhill.
Star Brad Pitt is allegedly no longer on speaking terms with director Marc Forster, even with the production heading into the last three weeks of reshoots. All this is being reported by Vulture as the budget balloons up to $170 million, and the ending still isn't quite finished-- you can't blame Pitt for being frustrated. What's funny is he and his producing partner DeDe Gardner actually fought for Forster to get the directing job, despite having only directed one other big-budget film (Quantum of Solace); that film had major production problems that were attributed to the writer's strike, but with similarly problems cropping up on World War Z, Forster now seems to be the common denominator.
As we reported a few days ago, Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard teamed up with Damon Lindelof to help restructure the film's ending, but neither has time to do what's apparently "months of work" left to do, so they're reaching out to even more writers. World War Z is still set for a summer release next year, but if more production delays crop up, we might have to wonder if that date has to be pushed yet again.
