World War Z without a doubt has had its share of problems, from re-shoots, to re-writes to the film going over budget (It has been reportedly stated the final expense of the film has been 180 million). However, visual effects supervisor John Nelson does his best to ease those tensions by dropping some details on what to expect from the upcoming horror film.
From EW:
"Pitt plays Gerald Lane, a United Nations researcher watching civilization teeter on collapse in the face of a rapacious army of rasping death. How can the relentless hordes be stopped? To answer that question, Lane accepts a mission that pulls him away from his family (Mireille Enos of AMC’s now-terminated series The Killing plays his wife) and sends him on a global search for the plague’s dark origins — and, yes, that fact-finding odyssey just might take three PG-13 films to complete, if World War Z gets a lively response at the box office."
Visual effects supervisor John Nelson (Iron Man) said World War Z’s zombies lean more toward sci-fi transformation victims rather than supernatural resurrection subjects. That led to a lot of research into animal behavior, especially for creatures under the amok-time sway of predator appetite or spawning urge.
On the reasons why they run rather than walk:
“They are like predatory animals that can’t control themselves,” Nelson said. “I worked with tigers [while shooting Gladiator], and if you watch them when a horse goes by they go batty, even if they know they can’t reach it. When Zs see humans they do same thing, they activate. They launch themselves.”
He went on to add: “There are a lot of things in nature we’re mining as references. They move like birds or school of fish, too, in reactive formations, and it’s not because they have a higher level of [shared] thinking or communication – it’s about their nature and the fact that their instinct to infect is so basic, efficient, and overpowering. They will go through anything. If they lose both legs, they will walk on their hands. They lock in and they’re like salmon going upstream or sperm swimming to be the first to egg.”
Unlike most fresh-water fish or spermatozoa, the zombies in the movie are resourceful when it comes to helicopter attacks. At one point in the film, a surging crowd of Zs climb up and over each other to create a writhing, wobbling column of infected flesh. “Everyone has seen everything in this genre,” Nelson said. “So of course we looked to try to find something new. And we have some.”
The official trailer will arrive later today with the film eyeing a release date on June 21, 2013.