Post by t0xin_ven0m on Feb 24, 2007 17:12:30 GMT -5
J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of the sci-fi series Babylon 5 who has also become a popular comic book scribe in recent years, announced yesterday that he is writing the screenplay adaptation of the zombie book World War Z for Paramount. The Max Brooks novel, which was optioned last summer by the studio for Brad Pitt's production company Plan B, is subtitled An Oral History of the Zombie War.
"You all know the novel World War Z?" asked Straczynski of his audience during a New York Comic-Con panel on Friday. "I'm adapting that for Paramount. For Brad Pitt potentially -- we'll see what happens. He might be the star in it. So things are going very well for a TV guy."
Straczynski acknowledges that the book needs to be modified in order to work as a movie, particularly since it is an anthology that features no main character or plot, but rather skips around through time via the recollections of the many survivors of a decade-long war against the living dead.
"What you have to do is… the book, if you haven't read it, is a wonderful, wonderful book in an interview format after the zombie wars," explains the scribe. "You see how we survived. It's very political, very smart, very cagey, but there's no main character. So you have to create who the interviewer is and give him some background and bring him from place to place to place to place. And they said, 'Feel free to get as political as you want, as incisive as you want, to play with it. You could look at this as a Katrina kind of catastrophe.' But I'm being very faithful to the book, letter by letter when I can, and I'm on about page 70 right now and I'm really happy with it. I'm really pleased with it actually, so if that goes well we might go into production on that one."
"You all know the novel World War Z?" asked Straczynski of his audience during a New York Comic-Con panel on Friday. "I'm adapting that for Paramount. For Brad Pitt potentially -- we'll see what happens. He might be the star in it. So things are going very well for a TV guy."
Straczynski acknowledges that the book needs to be modified in order to work as a movie, particularly since it is an anthology that features no main character or plot, but rather skips around through time via the recollections of the many survivors of a decade-long war against the living dead.
"What you have to do is… the book, if you haven't read it, is a wonderful, wonderful book in an interview format after the zombie wars," explains the scribe. "You see how we survived. It's very political, very smart, very cagey, but there's no main character. So you have to create who the interviewer is and give him some background and bring him from place to place to place to place. And they said, 'Feel free to get as political as you want, as incisive as you want, to play with it. You could look at this as a Katrina kind of catastrophe.' But I'm being very faithful to the book, letter by letter when I can, and I'm on about page 70 right now and I'm really happy with it. I'm really pleased with it actually, so if that goes well we might go into production on that one."
