World War Z Wins Box Office, Max Brooks Talks About Film!

Despite the nay sayers including myself World War Z has managed to scare up a serious box office this weekend. Not only did it manage to bring in approximately $66million not counting today it also toppled Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.

It did both opening in less theatres. World War Z was no doubt driven to the top with the help of Brad Pitt’s name attached to it. World War Z has a massive fan base but I highly doubt that the majority of mainstream movie fans have any clue that World War Z is based off the works of Max Brooks.

World War Z has gotten heat from fans for two reasons. Firstly it is not anything like the incredibly popular book and secondly the CGI. The CGI zombie special effects are just outright ridiculous making the zombies appear more like ants then zombies causing even me to speak out against the film. That said I think that Max Brooks said it best in an interview with Mansfield University where he noted that fans should see the movie as the movie and not compare it to the books.

Max Brooks had ZERO creative input to the film which as Max points out is the norm. He did not even get invited to see the script until after Brad Pitt’s production company PLAN B had started filming. Max Brooks decided not to read the script because he was afraid he would hate it. Worse he was afraid he might love the script and end up hating the final product after inevitable edits and reshoots.

The film rights for Max Brooks book World War Z were battled for even before the book was released in 2005. Brad Pitt’s production company and Leonardo Di’Caprio aggressively went after the rights until Max Brooks settled on Brad Pitt’s production company. That was the end of Max Brooks involvement.

Movies are NEVER as good as the books and Max Brooks had made it clear the book is the book the movie is the movie and the two are very different. It sounds like Max only regrets that his legions of fans will never get to see the Battle of Yonkers or a movie that is true to the book.

Flay Otters who writes for us reviewed World War Z and much to my surprise he thinks if you do as Max Brooks advised and see the movie as a stand alone production that its worth the money;

…World War Z is absolutely not an overproduced, unmitigated disaster some have predicted it would be. It is, at times, a bracing and tense disaster epic that writes its own rules for not only zombies, but how to tell a zombie story.

It does, however, lack some key moments of quiet contemplation that I think might’ve upped the human stakes and laid bare the emotional toll a disaster of this type would take. Taken as a whole, I enjoyed the film quite a bit and had a lot of fun with it for what it was. I’d definitely say the giant spectacle of it all is well worth the price of admission.

Are you going to go and see World War Z in theatres? Although I still think the ant-zombies are ridiculous I will be going this afternoon at 3 and hopefully it will be money well spent.