Ever since Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, bought the rights to Max Brooks’ story of a zombie pandemic, there had been rumours that he would star himself. Well now, at Comic-Con, Brooks has told Bleeding Cool (here and here) that these rumours have become hard fact.

The story chronicles a worldwide zombie outbreak through a series of first person accounts and so it remains to be seen whether that structure will be retained in any way or eschewed in favour of a more conventional narrative. Brooks believes that a summer 2012 release is planned, under the direction of Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, Monster’s Ball, The Kite Runner). J Michael Straczynski, who created Babylon 5 for television and then went on to script Changeling for Client Eastwood, drafted the screenplay, which has since been re-written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (Lions for Lambs, State of Play).

With the Dawn of the Dead remake, 28 Days/Weeks Later, Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland, recent years have seen a relative glut of quality zombie films. Hopefully World War Z will continue this trend.

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Dave has been writing for HeyUGuys since mid-2010 and has found them to be the most intelligent, friendly, erudite and insightful bunch of film fans you could hope to work with. He's gone from ham-fisted attempts at writing the news to interviewing Lawrence Bender, Renny Harlin and Julian Glover, to writing articles about things he loves that people have actually read. He has fairly broad tastes as far as films are concerned, though given the choice he's likely to go for Con Air over Battleship Potemkin most days. He's pretty sure that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most overrated mess in cinematic history.