Back in May, director Zack Snyder’s first Netflix original movie, Army of the Dead, dropped on the streaming service, and while there were already plans in motion to expand that zombie-filled world, it wasn’t too long after the premiere that Army of the Dead 2 talk unfolded. Well, by the following July, the sequel was officially confirmed to be moving forward, with Snyder and writer Shay Hatten working on the story. As of today, though, don’t call this project Army of the Dead 2 anymore, as it now has an official title that’s quite intriguing.
Per Zack Snyder himself, the Army of the Dead sequel will be called Planet of the Dead. The filmmaker revealed this while speaking with Inverse about the soon-to-arrive Army of the Dead prequel Army of Thieves, which reunites viewers with Matthias Schweighöfer’s Ludwig Dieter six years before he embarked into the zombie-ridden Las Vegas. Snyder didn’t reveal plot details about Planet of the Dead, but he did acknowledge there’s a chance that Dieter survived the events of Army of the Dead, so I guess now we should be prepared for the possibility the safecracker extraordinaire will resurface in the present day.
On the surface, a title like Planet of the Dead definitely indicates a broader scope compared to its predecessor. As those who’ve seen Army of the Dead will recall, the zombie outbreak managed to be contained to Las Vegas at the start of the movie, so the United States managed to live free from worry of being overrun by the undead. It even looked like zombies would be permanently eradicated from existence when Las Vegas was wiped off the map with a nuclear strike.
However, it was revealed at the end of Army of the Dead that Omari Hardwick’s Vanderhoe managed to survive the blast from within that bank vault Ludwig Dieter closed him in so the zombies wouldn’t get to him. With all that money to himself, it looked like Vanderhoe was ready to begin his worry-free and financially-comfortable life, but then he discovered he’d been infected during the events in Las Vegas. So not only would he soon become a zombie, but the stage is now set for a new outbreak to spread across the United States.
So looking through that particular lens, titling the sequel Planet of the Dead makes sense, as the action could take place anywhere in the world if this outbreak has gotten bad enough. That said, let’s not forget that early into Army of the Dead, we learned that the original zombie who started all this came from Area 51, and the virus itself was teased as potentially extraterrestrial in origin. So perhaps Planet of the Dead will confirm that, and even if the virus doesn’t hail from elsewhere in the universe, hopefully we’ll at least learn the fully story of how it came to be.
We’ll share any significant Planet of the Dead updates as they come in, but for now, Army of the Dead fans can look forward to the clock being turned back for Army of Thieves, which hits Netflix this Friday, October 29. There’s also an anime-style series coming called Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, which will follow several characters from the first movie dealing with the zombies when they started spreading across Las Vegas.
