Every so often the latest entertainment blog or gossip magazine leaks a picture of Brad Pitt on the set of his new film, World War Z. Pitt is producing and starring in the film, which is based on a 2006 post-apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks called World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
This week Pitt found himself filming scenes with "zombies, Israelis and Palestinians," and he didn't even have to go to the Middle East.
Max Brooks, the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, initially wrote the novel as a collection of individual accounts of "the Zombie War" in the form of personal anecdotes, a style which the screenplay writer, J. Michael Straczynski, tried to stay true to during the adaptation of the novel.
Pitt plays the role of Max Brooks, who acts as an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission who published the report a decade after the Zombie War.
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| Pitt on-set |
The real Brooks has claimed in interviews that he did everything in his power to keep the narrative of the original novel "realistic" with the exception of the zombies.
"Everything in World War Z (as in The Zombie Survival Guide) is based in reality... well, except the zombies. But seriously, everything else in the book is either taken from reality or 100% real. The technology, politics, economics, culture, military tactics... it was a LOT of homework," says Brooks.
In the novel, the war begins in China after a zombie bites a boy. The government attempts to contain the infection and creates a crisis to mask their activities. Quickly the virus spreads across other countries, creating outbreak after outbreak, and causing international chaos everywhere. The narratives cover governmental reactions, various political conspiracies, and general social reaction across the globe.
Israel has a solid role in the story. Wikipedia states: "As the infection spreads, only Israel initiates a nationwide quarantine and closes its borders. Pakistan and Iran destroy each other in a nuclear war after Iran attempts to stem the flow of refugees from Pakistan... At one point in the book, a Palestinian youth living in Kuwait refuses to believe that the dead are rising, fearing it is a trick by Israel. Many American characters blame the United States' inability to counter the zombie threat on low confidence in the government due to conflicts in the Middle East."
This week, World War Z is shooting in Malta, and aside from Pitt, about 300 extras portraying zombies, Israelis and Palestinians are present. The set and crew will move to Glascow, Scotland within a few weeks to continue filming there.
