World War Z Sequel Would Have Been a Little Like The Last of Us

In the years following the release of the Brad Pitt-starring World War Z in 2013, a number of reports emerged about getting a follow-up film, which would have seen Pitt reuniting with Se7en, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button director David Fincher. While that sequel has been scrapped seemingly entirely, Fincher recently teased how there were elements of that project that would have felt similar to what has been accomplished with HBO's The Last of Us adaptation. Fincher didn't explicitly say what would have been so similar about the two projects, but having anything in common likely makes the sequel feel even more like a project that won't be coming back from the dead.

When asked by GQ about what a World War Z sequel would have explored, Fincher teased, "Well, it was a little like The Last of Us. I'm glad that we didn't do what we were doing, because The Last of Us has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff. In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite ... they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show."

While not being an outright zombie story, The Last of Us takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which a fungus has infected humanity, turning them into various types of mindless monsters. The series' opening scenes do feature the initial stages of the infection, though then jumps forward years in time to see how society has coped with the creatures. It's unclear if the only commonalities between the planned World War Z sequel would have been a talk-show sequence or if there were more similarities as a whole.  

Published in 2006, Max Brooks' World War Z novel served as an oral history of a global zombie outbreak. The book consisted of a number of vignettes about the outbreak at various points in time and in different corners of the globe, feeling more like an anthology novel than a linear narrative. For the live-action adaptation, Pitt's character traveled to multiple parts of the globe after being separated from his family, which saw him encounter a variety of terrifying scenarios in which zombies were overpowering various communities.

With that film being more of a spiritual adaptation than a direct retelling of the source material, the outlet asked if a sequel would have been more faithful to the source, to which Fincher replied, "No, no. But there is some talk of doing that."

One of the last definitive updates about the sequel being scrapped came in 2019, yet a handful of updates over the years have seen members of the cast and crew hint that it could be revived at some point. Stay tuned for updates on the possible future of the World War Z sequel.

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