World War Z Slowly Building

Needs to be a miniseries.

Two things: I am reading the book now and I wish it was better written, because the concept is good. But all of the interviewees have similar voices, and none of them talk like real people. The kind of descriptions they give jar you from the reality of the book - people just don't talk like that.

Second thing is that, as much as I would like to see someone take a chance on a different storytelling approach, adapting this book faithfully is suicide. It's a series of vignettes that do not carry you from one to the next. People can get up and leave the theater at any time without missing anything except the next "cool" scene. There's no emotional story to carry people through. And it would only work as a miniseries if each of the vignettes were fleshed out more so that there are characters.

The book is very much like the Mars Attacks or Dinosaurs Attack card sets - cool set pieces and zero meat.

Yes!! YEEESS!! The Battle of Yonkers!!!! Bring it!!!

i could definitely see the movie as I read the book. i hope they stick to the documentary feel, i think it works fine as structured already.

brad pitt's involvement, however, is a red flag for me simply because when he is attached to projects that I REALLY REALLY want to see, they fall apart (e.g. The Fountain, To The White Sea). Here's to hoping that WWZ gets off the ground A-OK.


And "from the writer of He-Man, The Real Ghost Busters and Murder, She Wrote" is tempering my excitement.

How far are you into the book, Devin?

I agree that this would have to be fleshed out (pun intended) and I think there are ways to do that. I think BAND OF BROTHERS is the perfect example of how to do this - have a couple of main characters be the anchor and then phase in supporting characters and phase them out when their arcs are done. But I don't see any way possible how this could be a 2 hour movie.

In the book there are a couple of recurring characters but nothing near the level that a movie would require.

I am far enough along to get furious at Max Brooks' editor every time a new character refers to Iraq as a "brushfire." Get a new word.

is this book available in paperback...and is max brooks really mel brooks' son?

there are definitely major problems with character voice throughout the book. None of the subjects actually "sound" like they're from the countries they represent, which is problematic with a book set on a golbal scale. I'm curious, on the audio version do the interview subjects all speak through a "translator" or are there actually specific accents and/or dialects? I don't normally make it a practice to listen to audio books, but this one seems to be well suited for that particular format.

I've heard a couple of tracks from the audio book on the website, and it's basically Max Brooks interviewing voice actors that play the characters. (Mark Hamill is among them)

Alive in Joburg is pretty tight. Maybe Blomkamp should do WWZ (since Halo is ka-putzski)

I wanted to read it but I haven't yet because A) it's not in paperback yet and b) it's all re-tellings of events that have already happened, right? Hearing someone re-hash events doesn't sound super exciting to me.

I don't know. Tell me I'm wrong. I've heard good things.

Whoops, misread that question: they speak with dialects and accents.

to the best of my knowledge, there hasn't actually been a world-wide zombie war, so it's not a re-telling of events that have already happened. But I could be wrong.

I've been to Yonkers recently, and if a massive battle hasn't been fought there, they have no excuse.

I think he means that he heard it's written in an interview style where the interviewees discuss past events. I'd heard the same thing.

Post 1000. Yes! Do I get my secret decoder ring now?

I'm sorry.

Cross County Mall? Man, I miss Dragon's Den.

Okay, I just didn't want any confusion over the fact as to whether or not there's actually been a world-wide zombie war. As long as you know it's not based on real events, you should be able to enjoy the book. Otherwise it'd be a little scary.

Make a film or (very expensive) miniseries out of Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar" series instead. It mixes all the main events from WWII with an alien invasion. The invasion occurs in 1942 in the middle of the war and it forces the allies and axis to unite against the invaders.

Really? Sounds interesting. However, the really good thing about the books is the fact that they focus as much on the aliens and their lifestyle as on the humans. There are as many alien main characters as human and the alien weapon technolgy is described as our own will be in about 5 years, so it's really a battle between past and present.

Another cool idea is the fact taht the aliens get very old and their society, technolgy etc. develops very slowly. Their weapons haven't changed much in the last 800 earth years.

So when they probed our planet 800 years ago in order to prepare for the invasion, we humans were in the middleage and posed no threat against the alien weaponry. So imagine their surprise when all of the sudden we have guns and tanks 800 years later.

Harry Turtledove is a master of alternate history mixed with scifi. He is a real historian btw. His "guns of the South" is also very compelling. It's about a few russian spetnaz soldiers from a near future that travels back in time to the american civilwar, where they provide the southern armies with AK47s. One can imagine what just a few of these weapons could do to full regiments slowly marching forward.

It's strange that none of his books have been turned in to movies yet...

It does rob the narrative of most of the tension. A necessity of the "oral history" genre, and overall I think going for that was a good choice, but you're never on the edge of your seat wondering how a character's going to get out of a situation.

My final take on this:

The book uses the oral history format the best in the first half, which has most of the familiar zombie stuff. But the cool stuff in the second half... the book feels like an outline. You can see how Brooks wants to do these as narrative - the way the 'reveal' in the Chinese sub story is held until the end is retarded in an oral narrative, no one would tell the story that way - but I don't know if he felt hemmed in by his stylistic choice or what. I want these new takes on the zombie story to be told in full - I would read a lot more about the space station guys or about life in the safe zone west of the Rockies.

I think making a movie of this is a waste. What should be done is a series of interlocking graphic novels based on each story, with everything fleshed out. Or a series of novels, which would be terribly written pieces of mass market shit, which is too bad.

The book is good but in the end very frustrating to me.

I loved the book, but I can't disagree with you, Devin. And at the same time, there's some scenes in the book that beg to be visualized. Since description isn't Brooks' strong point, I can see why you'd be frustrated.

I have to agree with Dev on this one. I'm most of the way through the story, and having to tell things in the past tense removes all tension from the storyline.

That being said, I'd love to see this told in some episodic form, a miniseries being most appropriate.

The Chinese Sub storyline, the Downed Pilot in the Bayou, and obviously Yonkers would make great tales if told in a present tense.

I'd love to see Yonkers done in a teleplay format done many years ago on NBC called "Special Bulletin". It was much like Orson Welles and his telling of the War of the Worlds back in the thirties. A fictionalized news broadcast about a band of half-wit homegrown terrorists with a cobbled together nuke, and the merry hell that happened, all broadcast 'live'.

I went to buy this book last week at Borders and it was sold out.